


I Will Return Once More

by Kanthia



Series: The Canoe Trip AU [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Aggressively Canadian, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Summer Camp, Canoe Tripping, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-13
Updated: 2014-09-23
Packaged: 2018-01-15 13:06:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1305871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kanthia/pseuds/Kanthia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The caller laughs. “Your number was on your referral form. I was hoping it hadn’t changed -- I was wondering if you’d like to come back to Camp Lookout this year. Not as a camper, but as a staff.” A phone call from counselor-turned-director Erwin Smith sucks Levi back into a strange and wonderful world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lookout (Or: How to Flip a Canoe in One Easy Step)

**Author's Note:**

> For Nolan, wherever you are.
> 
> I was trying to figure out why this series struck such a chord with me, and came to realize that there are a lot of weird similarities between what the Scouting Legion does and what I do as a canoe tripper. This fic inevitably happened. It's based on Ontarian canoe tripping culture, which is a thing entirely of its own, so if there's anything that doesn't make sense, please let me know!
> 
> Comments are greatly appreciated! You can also find me on [tumblr](http://kanthia.tumblr.com/).

_Land of the silver birch_  
 _Home of the beaver_  
 _Where still the mighty moose_  
 _Wanders at will_

_Blue lakes and rocky shores_  
 _I will return once more_  
 _Boom diddy-ah da, boom diddy-ah da,_  
 _boom diddy-ah da, boo-oo-oom_

 

Spring comes around again with the twin smells of mud and sweat, the gym packed with nervous kids falling off resolutions they never intended to keep, and wet boots tracking shit everywhere. Levi usually lamented the passing of winter. This year, though, he finds in himself a weird sort of anticipation, antsy for the coming of summer. It’s a feeling that he can’t quite place, and that bothers the fuck out of him.

Somehow he’d managed to scrape his shit together by taking an extra year of high school, enough to get into an engineering program at the university that dominated his hometown. He’d never thought of himself as an engineer; he’d never thought of himself as much, really. But he could do half-decent calculations in his head and carry a shitty lab partner if he needed to. It had gotten him through a semester and a half of university. It would hopefully get him through the rest of his life.

The rest of his life started quite innocuously in the lobby of the chemical engineering building, where a bunch of them had gathered to work through their weekly calculus assignment.

“Hey, Levi,” someone says. He looks up, shoots a dirty look at the speaker, a blonde with a purple streak in her hair. “I’ve always meant to ask, where’d you buy that bracelet? The black and red one, I mean.”

Levi was about to tell her to fuck off, that such a thing didn’t come in a store, when his cell phone lights up with an unknown number. He stands up, marches with it into the hallway. He’d take a distraction over a confrontation.

“Levi,” the caller says, when he picks up.

“Holy shit,” Levi breathes. He knows that voice. “How the fuck did you find me?”

The caller laughs. “Your number was on your referral form. I was hoping it hadn’t changed -- I was wondering if you’d like to come back to Lookout this year.”

Levi pauses, realized he isn’t breathing, takes a breath. “You fucker. I’m too old for that bullshit.”

“Not as a camper,” Erwin says. “As a staff member.”

 

 

\----------------------

 

Camp Lookout is a charity for charity cases, a vegan-with-cheese hippie cesspool run by overly well-meaning volunteers, that takes kids out on free canoe trips. Levi figured out after his stepmom pulled the minivan away, when he was left standing on the porch of a run-down co-op house with fifty people bustling around him at six in the fucking morning, that he’d been signed up for a nine-day backcountry canoe trip up in the middle of nowhere. A free trip for bad kids. As much as Levi was looking forward to being away from home for nine days, fuck if he was going to enjoy going that long without a shower.

Three years later and he is back on that same porch next to the man who had been one of his counselors, back then. Nervous. The fact that he was nervous made him antsy. The fact that he was antsy pissed him off. The day of his interview he’d fucked up a lab, simply forgotten the procedure halfway through, and he thought he was better than someone so easily flappable.

“Staff move-in day’s always a little chaotic,” Erwin says, touting a clipboard. “Thanks for coming early.”

Levi wonders if he should congratulate Erwin, for moving up in the world. He’s the camp director now, king of this little corner of the world. “Whatever,” he says, instead. “Bunch of shitty city kids looking to pad their resumes.”

To his surprise Erwin chuckles; Levi side-eyes him, but he seems to be genuinely amused. After all, three years ago Levi had accused him of being exactly the same thing. “Well, I did all the hiring, so we’ll have to see if they meet your -- expectations.” Erwin taps the clipboard and Levi, still standing next to his pile of things, toes the wood porch with a worn-out sneaker.

“I’m gonna go move my stuff in,” he declares, finally. “And maybe clean up this shithole, while I’m at it.”

The Lookout house is a student co-op in the fall and winter, meant to house six people pretending to be friends, a three-storey building that is really starting to show its age. In the summer they shove the students out and cram a director and twenty-five staff with questionable hygiene into the five upstairs bedrooms, and the sixth, on the ground floor right by the entrance, becomes the director’s office. The room next to the kitchen becomes a food room -- a glorified pantry full of tubs of peanut butter and dried apricots and a metric fuckton of corn syrup and the like. Equipment goes in the basement, canoes in the backyard. Earlier that week, after he’d finished exams and the anticipation of the start of summer had gotten to be too much, Levi had helped Erwin set up the food room and drag all the equipment out of winter storage. There was still a ton of shit to do before the first camper trip went out (it was amazing how many holes one plastic tarp could get over the winter), but that was all part of staff training, and Erwin had assured him that twenty-five pairs of hands were surprisingly efficient.

Not that Levi trusted any of them. The staff bedrooms are mostly empty, just five mattresses on the floor, and after picking the bed closest to the window in the last room on the top floor Levi treats it to a firm shaking-out and dusting before it is clean enough to dress with bedsheets and lay his clothes and gear out on top. There are cleaning supplies left out in the hallway, for move-in day tidying -- he vacuums the wall-to-wall carpeting in his bedroom, washes and mops the hardwood floors in the hallway, and cleans out the third floor bathroom. It isn’t until he’s vacuuming the stairs down to the second floor that he realizes there are a whole lot more people bustling around him, and something that smells like dinner is wafting up from the kitchen, and Erwin is calling them all down to eat.

 

 

\----------------------

 

There’s a shit-ton of perogies and onions and spinach salad in the kitchen, and dishes fucking everywhere. The living room is connected to the kitchen and they eat, all twenty-six of them sitting in a circle like grade schoolers, as Erwin points to a paper calendar on the wall and explains the dish-doing and dinner-making and garbage-putting-out schedule during the month of staff training. Food orders come in once a week, in bulk; it’s all cheap and vegan but for the huge blocks of cheddar cheese, which they needed to be careful not to overuse, because the board of directors was always housing their asses about cheese expenses. Levi looks around the room. It’s a mess of limbs and faded old furniture and he recognizes two returning staff from the year he was a camper, and one girl he’s fairly certain he’s seen around campus once or twice.

“It’s not going to be an easy month,” Erwin is saying, as copies of the training schedule are passed around. “But I think you’ll find that it’s easier than the trips themselves.” Nervous laughter. “Training starts at 8 each morning and finishes at 8 each night. No drinking during training hours. A hangover is not an excuse for missing a morning training session.” More laughter. One of the returning staff snorts. “It’s normal to have moments of doubt, but there are twenty-five other people in the room who are going through the exact same thing as you, and even off-hours the door to my office is always open if you want to chat. -- So if that’s out of the way, why don’t we introduce ourselves?”

They go around the circle starting with Erwin, who apparently teaches up north during the school year. It’s a fact that Levi had never known. The girl he recognizes from school introduces herself as Petra; she’s a student in the nursing program looking for a real-world experience. The returning staff are Mike and Hanji. Levi introduces himself in four words, his name and program, and soon the circle is complete and they’re discussing how to make an overstuffed house with an open pantry work for a whole month. Erwin scribbles some notes on a piece of chart paper -- much to Levi’s chagrin, ‘don’t take too long in the shower’ is on there -- and training is called to an end for the day.

Someone puts on some weird music and someone else pulls out a two-four of PBR and Levi watches Erwin as he slowly pushes himself up and disentangles himself from the chaos, heading towards his office. Someone puts their arm over his shoulder, holding a can of beer for him. He takes the beer and looks -- it’s Hanji, eyes sparkling.

“Erwin mentioned he’d hired a past camper,” she says. “I thought it might be you. It’s good to see you -- how’ve you been holding up?”

“I’m alive,” Levi mumbles, before popping the tab on his beer and taking a drink. It’s warm, but it’s free. “This tastes like shit.” Hanji laughs.

“You know, Mike found out about what you pulled on your trip from Nile -- you remember Nile, right? -- after the debrief. Almost blew a gasket.” She turns to Mike, who is sitting on one of the couches, sniffing his beer can. “Didn’t you, Mike?” Mike shrugs nonchalantly. “Anyways, be prepared for a lot of people asking you what it’s like to be both a camper and a staff -- but everyone’s really well-meaning, I promise.”

She takes the arm off his shoulder, and his eyes drift to the bracelets on her left wrist -- there are eight of them, to Levi’s one, and for a moment he feels outclassed. He quickly chases the thought out of his head, assures himself that once they get out into the woods they’d all be the same, regardless of experience. Then he starts collecting plates and cutlery. Someone would have to make sure the house didn’t fall apart.

But to his surprise, four people help him on the dishes and three others join in helping mop the kitchen, and once the floor is dry someone moves the music into the kitchen and someone else breaks out a headlamp with a blinking light function, sets it atop the fridge, turns out the overhead light. Levi’s a few beers in and feeling okay about the world, the tiny kitchen feels like a dance hall, 90s dance pop is rattling the walls, and maybe, just maybe, he made the right choice coming here in the first place.

Eventually everyone settles down to their mattress or someone else’s. At some ungodly hour in the night Levi finds himself sitting on the porch, nursing a glass of water, staring up at the sky and thinking about how much brighter the stars were outside the city. He turns to his left; the light’s still on in the office. He pushes himself up and into the house.

Erwin’s office is a fucking nightmare, papers and equipment piled up everywhere, camper files stacked high, a map of the backcountry canoe routes falling off from where it was hastily tacked to the wall. Erwin himself is bent over a desk mostly buried under cans of stove fuel looking over some forms. His dinner, half-eaten, has congealed into a mess of onions and cheese on the plate.

“You disgusting old pig,” Levi growls, and Erwin looks up. “What the fuck is this all about?”

Erwin puts the papers down and stretches, and his faded grey v-neck t-shirt rides up just enough that Levi finds himself wondering how he manages to pull off being a respectable member of society ten months of the year. “Just doing some last-minute confirmations. Everything go okay today?”

Levi grabs the plate of food off the desk, in response. The room isn’t anywhere near clean by the time Erwin’s done whatever he had to do, but Levi is pushed out of the office, told to get some rest before the sun rises.

 

 

\----------------------

 

8 AM rolls around the next morning and they hit the ground running. There’s a talk from a local authority on the meaning of ‘at-risk youth’, and Levi’s head nods forward so many times he feels like he’s given himself whiplash. He figured no-one noticed, but during lunch when the lot of them elbow their way around the house’s tiny kitchen scrounging a lunch together from tortilla wraps and huge cans of chickpeas and enormous bags of spinach and insane amounts of cheese Mike ruffles his hair knowingly, and Hanji elbows him in the side ‘just to test his reflexes’.

The afternoon finds them all in bathing suits, huddling around a swimming pool at the local Y as an instructor with frosted tips in his blond hair starts teaching them the fundamentals of not letting anyone drown. Erwin had driven them there in an old school bus Levi remembers from three years prior, that had taken them out to the backcountry and brought back a whole lot of memories.

He’s practicing rescue breathing on Petra when next to him, a kid from a university in a different town named Gunther motions towards the bracelet on Levi’s left wrist.

“That a trip bracelet?”

Levi goes through the motions of CPR, barely making skin-to-skin contact. “Yeah.”

“Erwin’s got the same one.”

Levi leans in close for rescue breathing, narrows his eyes. Gunther clears his throat; Petra’s eyes flutter closed, she’s barely suppressing a fit of giggles. “Yeah.”

“You’re not a returning staff, though.”

“Camper.”

“Oh.” Gunther’s lips curl into a smile. “So, what’s it like being both a camper and a --”

Hanji, who was supposed to be pretending to be a drowning non-swimmer, yells something that sounds like _first!_ to Mike, who was flopping around on the pool deck pretending to be a fish. Mike leaps into the water as Hanji propels herself up, and they high-five before colliding. Somebody shouts for a lifeguard. Six people hop into the pool.

 

 

\----------------------

 

They’re out behind the staff house and Erwin is pointing to a beat-up Grumman canoe like it’s a person, naming all its parts -- deck, all three thwarts, bow, stern, gunwale, rocker. He takes care to point out the yoke, the thwart running crosswise in the centre, where the canoe rests upon one’s shoulders while being carried.

June has just started and it’s finally warm enough for t-shirts and shorts. Erwin’s in a plaid button-up and pink shorts and running shoes, and Levi thinks he looks ridiculous, and a little underslept.

“It’s all right if you don’t get it right away,” he’s saying, as he stands beside the centre of the canoe. “All sorts of factors play in -- height, upper-body strength, weight distribution.” He bends his knees and grabs either side of the yoke. “Every canoe’s different, too. Some are front-heavy, others back-heavy. Everyone has their preference -- I tend to prefer canoes like Flynn with a more even weight distribution.” All the canoes are named and decorated. Mike swears that people get weirdly attached. Hanji swears that if anyone other than her takes The Colossal out on trip, she’ll cut them. Levi’s wondering which canoe he was in back then when Erwin bends his knees, picks up the boat, then in one fluid motion flips the canoe over his head. Someone gasps.

“Nothing to it,” Erwin says, taking a few steps before gently setting the canoe down again. “Just make sure that nobody’s in front of you or behind you, and never be afraid to ask for someone’s help rolling it up. The power comes all from your thighs.”

They have some time to practice, and Levi finds himself standing next to a canoe named The Scout, eyeing it without looking for anything in particular. Around him, people are rolling up canoes with varying levels of success, from Mike who does it effortlessly, to Petra and Nanaba, who are trying to figure out how to help one another. Instead of grabbing the centre thwart, because fuck if his arms are reaching that far, Levi grabs the thwart on the stern end, rolls up the canoe with the bow gunnel still on the ground, and slides himself to the center.

After a few practice steps Levi sets it down, wipes a bead of sweat from his forehead, and looks up. Several people have noticed, and are trying to roll up from the stern end instead. He glances to his right. Erwin is looking right at him, a smile on his face.

 

 

\----------------------

 

“You’re quite strong for someone your size.”

Levi’s cleaning up Erwin’s office again, because it’s incredible how quickly Erwin lets clutter build up. It’s become a nightly thing. After the first night the drunken parties have more or less quieted down; Levi has a can of PBR on a coaster on the corner of Erwin’s desk that he occasionally returns to as he rearranges papers and smooths out the maps hanging on the walls.

Erwin’s comment makes him pause. He turns away from a shelf of office supplies to face the director, who hasn’t changed out of those fucking pink shorts, a million thoughts running through his head. “Whatever,” he says, finally. “Carrying heavy things is something I can do just fine. That’s what you hired me for.”

Erwin stands up, walks right over to him -- dangerously close. Then he leans over Levi and grabs a box off the shelf, a box of differently coloured trip rope. He pulls out a red and black rope. “Do you remember what you said, Levi, on Day 6? At the campsite, while we made dinner?”

Levi remembers, of course. He was still weak after the incident, wrapped in his sleeping bag. The two of them had been sitting by the fire in the late afternoon, Nile and Ilse looking after the rest of the campers. A pot of water was atop the grill, slowly coming to a boil. Levi was ravenous.

“It’s hard,” he had said, finally, desperate for something to break the silence.

Erwin cocked an eyebrow. “What’s hard?”

Levi was looking for words that he wasn’t sure he had, dredging up a feeling right from the bottom of his soul, like scraping at butter at the bottom of a tin. “Being weak,” he said. “In front of people.”

“It’s not weakness. Weakness is not coming out here in the first place.” Erwin’s voice trailed off, and all that there was was the sound of a crackling fire, and the wind whispering through pine trees, and the distant sound of people splashing in the water. Levi leaned back, looked up at the sun and the blue sky giving way to pink, thought about the city with its straight lines and square houses.

“Not bad,” he’d murmured.

(Levi associates two things with Camp Lookout: warm beer, and the sound of the wind in red pines.)

 

 

\----------------------

 

They pile into the bus and Erwin drives them to a farm forty-five minutes out of town for a week-long crash-course in wilderness first aid. Their instructor is a past Lookout director, a hard-edged guy named Shadis, who (among other things) forces them to figure out collectively how to remove someone with a spinal injury from a tree. Erwin, who’s looking to recertify, joins them.

Shadis breaks them into two groups on the fourth night for practice situations and drives half of them out behind the farm, into the woods. Levi’s with the other half of the group prepping first aid kits; with hushed voices they go over their notes and handbooks, not knowing what to expect. The air is electric, excited, nervous. Levi’s checking his gear, making sure he has a flashlight, when Petra sits next to him.

“Um, Levi,” she says. Levi looks up. She’s fidgeting. “We were wondering -- ah, you know how Shadis says to always have a leader in a crazy situation? To organize everyone, keep everyone organized? We were, um. Wondering if --”

“--Yeah,” Levi says. He’s not sure why they would ask him and not someone else, someone more used to talking and leading. Part of him wonders if Erwin set them up for this, but Erwin’s out in the woods, probably getting covered in fake blood. “That’s fine. Make sure everyone has a flashlight and knows where the kits are. Scrounge up some emergency blankets.”

Someone shouts, and there’s a light wavering down the road, attached to a flashlight, attached to Hanji. She’s surprisingly good at acting inconsolable, but Levi places both hands on her shoulders and asks, quietly, what happened. She points to the woods; there’s been an accident, she says. After making sure Petra’s rounded up a few blankets and they all have their gear, they follow Hanji towards the woods.

Shadis is renowned for making up wild situations, and when they arrive, it’s all noise and confusion, people stuck under trees and having heart attacks, lost in the woods in the dark. In a small clearing Levi lays out a blanket and divides his group into search teams. They know they’re looking for twelve people, and they’re not done until there are thirteen bodies in front of him, stable or dead. He sends Hanji out with them. He knows how powerful it can be to have the ability to lend a hand.

And of course the first body to come out of the woods is Erwin, leaning on Mike’s shoulder, a tourniquet hastily applied to his jacket just below what is supposed to be left of his right arm. There’s fake blood everywhere. Levi thanks Mike and sends him back into the woods, and guides Erwin down to lie on the blanket, starts to fix the tourniquet.

“I’d love to hear the story that Shadis gave you for this,” Levi says.

Erwin laughs. “We were a group of hikers who got lost, and were suddenly overcome by fifteen-foot-tall cannibals.”

“That’s fucking weird.” He finishes redressing the wound, hopes that Shadis finds his work acceptable, and starts to check the rest of Erwin’s body, gently pressing around for other wounds. “Tell me if this is supposed to hurt.”

Nothing else hurts; Erwin gently reminds Levi to check his spine before lifting his head. “Nothing’s worse than a spinal injury in the woods,” he says. “Moblit’s supposed to have a spinal. Hanji’s instructions were to freak out if she comes across him.”

As if on cue, Hanji’s scream cuts into the night, and a cloud of bats dart out of the trees. Levi lifts Erwin’s head, places it in his lap, starts to check his neck and the base of his skull. Erwin sighs and closes his eyes.

“I’m supposed to have a heart attack and die, now,” he whispers, grinning.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” Levi growls. “I’ll kill you if you do that.”

Erwin laughs, and closes his eyes. They sit in silence for a few moments before Gunther emerges with Nanaba, who has a beach ball stuffed up her shirt and is supposed to be in labour. Then it’s all business, bandaging wounds and giving orders and keeping everyone calm -- fifty percent of first aid is soft skills, reminding people that despite all the shit they’ve seen they still need to keep moving forward -- and after thirty minutes that feel like six hours they have the whole group arranged in the clearing.

“Terrible,” Shadis says, surveying the scene, including the newly-delivered beach ball that they’ve named Bean. “But passable. Good work.”

They pack everything up and head back to the farmhouse, and everyone’s exhausted from all the emotion and head straight to bed in sleeping bags scattered all over the house. Levi can’t sleep, boils some water and roots through the boxes of food they’d brought with them for some tea. Erwin finds him in the kitchen just as the water is boiling and grabs some instant coffee. They move out onto the porch, sit with their legs hanging over the edge, Levi with a teacup and Erwin with his mug, and there’s a huge moon and a hundred million stars.

 _Not bad_ , Levi thinks. Outside the city there are so many more stars. He takes a drink and feels the warmth right down in the bottom of his belly, and Erwin is very, very close.

Erwin leans back. “How are you holding up?” Their hips are touching. Levi swallows. In a way that he can’t explain, he’s relieved to see Erwin’s right arm again.

“All right,” he says. “It’s easier. Than I thought it would be.”

“That was really impressive, the way you handled the group tonight. Levi, you’re --”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“--good. Really good.”

Levi looks down and away, not wanting to see Erwin’s smile, and sips his tea again. A chill wind blows in and he shudders; Erwin drapes his arm over him.

Now he looks up, to Erwin, who’s taking a drink from his own mug. Erwin’s eyes widen a little and he smiles, puts his mug down beside him, and suddenly Levi is thinking _oh shit oh shit oh shit_ because it’s happening, Erwin Smith the counselor who carried his unresponsive body off a portage is getting really fucking close, and Levi hasn’t kissed anyone in ages.

Erwin pauses with his lips centimeters away from Levi’s, breathes out warm air that sends a cold bolt straight to Levi’s toes, and takes Levi’s chin with his free hand. Levi can feel his heart hammering in his throat.

“Shit,” Levi manages. “You gonna look all day, or --”

And then Erwin’s lips are on his, warm on warm. Levi’s hands cradle the teacup and he’s not really sure what he’s supposed to do with it but Erwin’s tongue darts forward and it’s then hot and wet and breathless and Levi doesn’t care that it was pretend, he feels like Erwin died in his arms and the summer is going by way too fast. Levi’s eyes slip closed. Erwin tastes like coffee and the first day of spring, his hand migrates to the back of Levi’s head and they’re moving, heads undulating in time with one another, and when they finally part Levi opens his eyes, sees Erwin looking open and carefree, and something like happiness forces its way up and out of him and manifests itself as a smile. Levi leans into Erwin’s chest, and Erwin gathers him close.

“Go get some sleep,” Erwin says, softly, after a while. “We’re learning about how to regulate bowel movements tomorrow morning.”

The memory of Erwin keeps him warm all night.


	2. Beginnings (Or: Why is American Beer Like Making Love in a Canoe?)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Levi.” Erwin’s voice is low and flat. “Can I trust you?” Featurng sangria in peanut butter buckets, sock-wrestling, Nile's spiffy car, and staff trip.

The first day back from the farmhouse there’s an item on the training schedule called “music appreciation” after dinner; all the returning staff have been mum about it. They spend the morning repairing equipment, Levi’s with the team repairing tarps. It’s a long but fairly simple process involving covering the tears with duct tape, heating up the back of a spoon, and pressing the spoon to the tape until plastic melts to plastic. It comes down to three hours of hot spooning jokes.

Levi learns from Mike that Erwin was supposed to go to med school and become a neurosurgeon, but had decided, against his mother’s will, to go to teachers’ college instead. He files that with the other stuff he hadn’t known but wasn’t surprised about.

Over lunch they hear a talk about the proper ways to bear-proof a campsite, and they have swimming lessons in the afternoon. It’s back to business as usual, which is never very usual, but at least has a nice rhythm to it. Levi’s on dinner duty with Erd, and they’re running really low on peanut butter, which forces them to scratch their idea of a peanut-butter-soy-sauce stir fry, and sends them scrounging for another source of protein.

Hanji, Mike and Moblit wander into the kitchen as they’re dumping the vegetables and beans into a pot with tomato sauce and a stock they’d improvised out of powdered vegetarian chicken soup mix, making a Spanish rice instead.

Mike peers into the pot. He’s shirtless, and Levi considers telling him to get his nose out of the food. “Thought you were doing a stir-fry,” he says.

“We’re out of peanut butter,” Erd says, almost apologetic. “Someone should tell Erwin to add it to the food order for next week.”

Hanji’s eyes are sparkling, and Levi is suddenly concerned. “Already?” Her voice creeps up the octave. “One of the twenty-litre tubs is empty?”

“Yeah,” Levi says. “What are you --”

Hanji grabs Moblit by the back of his shirt collar. “We’re going out to do things. Tell Erwin we’re sorry about music appreciation, he’ll understand.”

They’re already down the hall, out the door. Mike shrugs and follows them. “Work extra hard.”

Levi relays the information as the rest of the staff gather for dinner, and a small grin breaks on Erwin’s face. “Is that so,” he says. “Already?”

“Fucking weirdos,” Levi says, into his bowl. It’s good, though, the dinner they scraped together. Someone suggests reheating the leftovers with cheese between two tortillas for lunch the next day, and Levi wonders aloud if that would give you terrible shits, and twenty-two of them are launched into an animated conversation about poop quality. Erwin stands up, clears his throat, and tacks a piece of paper to the wall.

“Sign up for a part of the house and get to work once you’re done eating. Unless you’re on dish-duty, then you already have somewhere to be.”

Auruo, who’s closest to the paper, takes a closer look. “Hold on,” he says. “We’re cleaning the house? What about music appreciation?”

Erwin smiles. “I’ll put on some music, and you can appreciate it while you work.”

Levi can’t help but snort. He might use that one, every day, for the rest of his life. There’s a bit of well-intentioned grumbling as people scoop up the easy jobs first -- vacuuming the carpets and airing the mattresses and the like -- and Levi waits until the crowd has mostly disappeared before checking the list. He’s left with the first-floor bathroom, which he’s okay with. It gets the most traffic and he’d been meaning to subject it to a really thorough scrubbing.

As he’s getting out the Lysol Ke$ha starts blaring in the living room; he pokes his head in, sees Erwin flipping through his iPod.

“Are you fucking serious,” Levi says, flatly. Erwin shrugs, walks back to his office. Levi stands there for a few moments until the office door closes behind Erwin, then shakes his head and gets back to work.

Ke$ha is crooning about a packed club when Hanji, Mike and Moblit cruise through the front door. Levi catches them as they walk through the hallway into the kitchen; Mike and Moblit are weighed down with brown paper bags, and Hanji is carting plastic grocery bags full of what appears to be fruit. Levi doesn’t ask. He doesn’t want to know. He’s scrubbing the toilet when he hears the sound of a plastic tub in the sink and running water, and finally, when the bathroom is spotless he washes his hands and joins them in the kitchen.

“Ah, Levi,” Hanji says, her hands deep in the now-empty peanut butter tub as she scrubs it clean. “You can slice oranges, if you want.”

“The fuck is this?” There’s a ton of wine, and rum, and fruit all over the recently-cleaned kitchen. “Are you making --”

“Lookout tradition!” Hanji waves the scrub-brush. “Every time we finish a tub of peanut butter, we clean it out and fill it with sangria. It’s gonna be a good night.”  
  


\----------------------

It’s a good night.

People start filing downstairs as they finish cleaning, and soon the living room is packed with the lot of them drinking sangria out of chipped mugs, talking, reminiscing, letting each other into one another’s lives, singing along to Taylor Swift. Levi’s sitting in a corner, and around the time he realizes he’s lost track of the number of cups he’s had, Auruo sits next to him, toasts his mug.

“So,” Auruo slurs, “You never did tell us about the time you were a camper--”

Hanji, who was otherwise engaged in narrating a game of Mafia, yells _eighth_! and runs over to high-five Levi. Levi refuses the hand and so she ruffles his hair instead, before immediately returning to explain the horrifically grisly way that Petra died while the lights were out. (Shadis’ line about fifteen-foot cannibals has become a running joke, and Hanji is motioning wildly with her hands as she declares that the group ran into one in a forest.)

Levi realizes that nobody’s gotten Erwin, and so he pushes himself up, mug in hand, and makes his way to the office. The door’s still closed. He pushes it open, opens his mouth to say something, but Erwin’s on the phone and puts a finger to his lips before motioning for Levi to close the door. He does, suddenly aware of how loud the music is.

Erwin finishes his conversation and hangs up, then looks up at Levi. Levi holds out his mug. “Sangria night,” he manages. He’s drunker than he thought.

“Ah, of course.” Erwin stands up. “I meant to join you earlier, but I got caught on the phone.”

Levi swallows. “With who?”

“Board of Directors.” Erwin smooths his hair, grimaces. “Our money comes from two places -- small donations and corporate donations -- and corporate donations are down. They’re talking about changing Lookout, so that we take kids out on day trips to local parks instead. Would save us the gas money of driving the bus four hours to get to where the canoe routes are.”

“That’s bullshit,” Levi says, with more conviction than he thought he had. “Someone should take all those corporate pigs and drop them in the woods and see how they do.” He takes another drink, drains the cup. “Maybe donations are down because they saw your pink shorts.”

“They’re salmon,” Erwin says, almost petulantly, but follows Levi out, regardless, to the living room where people are gyrating out of time to the music. People have spilled into the kitchen, the porch, the backyard. Erwin grabs a mug, some drink, and a handful of caramel popcorn from a pan on the stove. The house is thrumming and Levi feels wild and alive.

There’s a sock-wrestling tournament being conducted on the front lawn, people struggling to take one another’s socks off within a rope circle, and somehow Levi gets roped in, quite literally. He’s fast for his size, takes down staff taller than him, even Auruo who attempts to use rubber bands to hold his socks up. After a pulse-pounding match between Mike and Erwin, it comes down to Levi and Erwin, circling one another amidst hoots and hollers and someone neighing like a horse.

“Come on, you gross old man,” Levi says. “Try and center-flip me, I dare you.”

Erwin laughs, takes a step forward. Levi feints right. Erwin grabs him by the waist, picks him up, throws him over his shoulder. Someone cheers. Levi beats furiously on Erwin’s back but it’s impossible, and Erwin casually removes his socks, one by one.

The end of the tournament seems to knock the wind out of the party. The music gets turned down and then off, the front lawn cleared out. Erwin’s still holding him over his shoulder, and Levi is suddenly too tired to fight back.

Levi wakes up in the morning in a tent pitched on the front lawn, shoved up against one of the tent walls, one leg slung over Erwin. He sits up, rubs his eyes. There are at least six bodies in the four-person tent, all fully clothed and piled on top of one another, and Levi wonders if something has changed. Erwin cracks open one eye, checks his watch, holds up one finger and mouths ‘one more hour’. In any other situation he would have left for his own bed, but if he was the only person who could make sure Erwin slept properly, he would have to make some sacrifices. He lies back down, lets Erwin throw an arm over him.

The night was good. The morning, when they have a two-hour workshop on peer-to-peer mediation and everyone’s hungover? Not as good.  
  


\---------------------- 

Erwin has the bright idea to hold an afternoon busking fundraiser downtown rather than doing extra canoeing practice, hoping to drum up some funds from the locals and tourists. Levi has absolutely no talents and asks to stay behind, maybe work through some of that paperwork that’s always crowding Erwin’s desk, but Erwin insists that he help him count bills.

That’s when Levi learns that Nanaba plays a mean acoustic guitar and that Hanji has a really nice singing voice. They’re doing surprisingly good on cash, getting donations from past campers and staff and people who think that what they do is good for the community, and the whole group is belting out Wonderwall with a couple passersby when a black car pulls up to their street corner. The driver steps out; it’s Nile in a crisp suit, and there’s a woman in the passenger seat.

Levi bristles. Seeing Nile brings back a few uncomfortable memories. Of his three counselors back then, he had gotten along with Nile the least. Not that they had butted heads -- Levi had just ignored him for the first five days, focused on punishing his stepmother by punishing Erwin by punishing himself, until all hell broke loose.

Nile strikes up a conversation with Erwin and Erwin’s playing the role of someone smiling and relaxed, just long enough for Nile to get out his checquebook. After Nile pulls away Erwin drops the cheque with the rest of the bills and coins. It’s a sum far too big for someone who two years prior was guiding canoe trips with Lookout. Levi idly wonders what went wrong, and when.

“You’re right about some people doing it to pad their resumes,” Erwin says, that night, as they go over food orders in his office. “But it’s not all bad. Some people come for a summer and realize it’s not the kind of life they can keep at. Sometimes we get staff who drop out in the middle of training, or after their first camper trip. Part of my job is being able to tell when someone is about to break.”

Erwin looks tired, really tired, but Levi knows that Erwin is the last person who would ever break, the person who thinks through every worst-case scenario three days before it happens.

“Back then, on the portage.” Levi stares him down. “Did you know?”

Erwin meets his gaze. “I made a gamble,” he says. “On how far you would go.”  
  


\----------------------  
  


Staff training culminates with a nine-day staff trip, meant to emulate a camper trip as closely as possible. There are three groups, each led by a returning staff; Levi’s not surprised to see his name listed in Erwin’s group.

A new kind of nervous energy fills the house as they start prepping food and equipment. Suddenly, it all seems a little more real -- as though the previous month was a silly little dream filled with sangria and swimming lessons. There’s a pre-brief one afternoon, the eight of them sitting in a circle sharing how they act when under stress. Levi, who doesn’t like to go about sharing his dark moments with people, says that he doesn’t know. Maps are handed out, Erwin describes the route and how he expects the three canoes to be arranged while on the water. With so much left up to chance he wants them to always be in sight of one another, in case a boat capsizes or needs assistance. Levi can appreciate that.

He spends most of the prep days in the kitchen with Auruo, jostling for space on the dehydrator. Mike, who’s prepping the food for his team with Nanaba, makes himself an invaluable resource on food portioning. “Everything’s different out there,” he says, as he spoons peanut butter into an empty litre water bottle. “People eat twice as much as they usually do.”

“I’ve read that one can expect to use up to eight thousand calories a day,” Nanaba says, into the pot she is stirring.

The sight of so much food in one place -- particularly the thirty-two litre bucket of corn syrup in a corner of the food room -- disgusts Levi, but he trusts Mike’s judgement, and he doubles the portions. Hanji, who had been spooning out a mixture of strawberry jam and apple sauce onto one of the dehydrator trays to make fruit leathers, launches into an animated lecture about trip nutrition.

As she’s describing the contested science of protein combining, Erwin and Lynne amble in up from the basement, looking dirtier than normal. Lynne is wiping her hands on a cloth. “Equipment’s coming along,” Erwin says. “We’re done with the stove kit and repair kit, and we’ve picked out tents. How’s the food?”

“On its way,” Levi says, handing him the list with prepped items highlighted. Erwin looks it up and down.

“Day 6 is a push day,” he says. “We’ll need a better snack than that. Make some Hanji Bars. Fourteen should be fine.”

Levi cocks an eyebrow. “Hanji Bars?”

Hanji pokes her head out of the food room. “Have you ever wondered how many calories it’s possible to fit into twenty-five square centimeters?”  
  


\----------------------  
 

Trip mornings start at six, so that the bus can leave at eight and get to the park around noon; the night before is an early night for everyone. Despite everything, Levi can’t sleep. Midnight finds him sitting atop the fire escape, drinking tea out of a teacup he’s used so often everyone assumes it’s his.

Someone shuffles up the stairs. Levi turns; it’s Erwin, of course, with another mug of coffee. He ducks at the top of the stairs (one of the side-effects of being too fucking tall) and his eyebrows raise when he notices him.

“Can I join you?”

“Go the fuck to sleep,” Levi says, but moves to make room.

Of course, Levi remembers the night on the farmhouse porch, and there’s a nervous energy in the air. Erwin makes no move, just sips, and eventually sighs and leans back, his back against the Lookout house. Down below, a few straggling cars make their way through the night, and for a moment, Levi doesn’t mind the city.

“Levi.” Erwin’s voice is low and flat. “Can I trust you?”

Levi shrugs. “I’m here because of you. I’ll do whatever you tell me to do.”

“You know that’s not what I’m talking about.” A silence hangs in the air between them, thick and accusatory. Finally, Erwin breaks the silence. “Well, I suppose I’ll have to see, tomorrow. Don’t make me regret bringing you here.”

“You won’t,” Levi says. “It’s different, now. Back then, I was -- different.”

“Ah, well. Are you still in touch with Farlan?”

“Nah, he dropped out and moved across the country. Haven’t heard from him in ages.”

“Shame. You seemed to get along with him pretty well.”

They reminisce about their first trip like that, sharing memories of high winds and low fires, the time they had to paddle around a moose who had stopped for lunch in the middle of a river, Ilse’s way of documenting everything, the night that the staff let the campers make dinner and somehow they had left all the garlic raw. The last night, when they had done the trip rope ceremony, and hot plastic had accidentally dripped onto Levi’s wrist and had left a small circular scar. They start talking about staff training: hot days, crowded nights, Hanji’s singing voice. (“We’re really lucky to have her,” Erwin says. “I’ve never met someone so passionate about what we do at Lookout.”)

Eventually Erwin checks his watch. “It’s almost two, we should probably get some sleep before tomorrow.” He stands up, stretches, retreats. Levi watches him as he leaves, wondering if Erwin was expecting an apology, or at least an excuse.  
  


\----------------------  
 

Everyone’s the same on the bus ride up to their first trip: laughing excitedly to cover the nerves, trying to act tough in the face of the unknown. Two hours into the ride they stop at a Tim’s for their last celebratory taste of civilization. Levi sips a steeped tea while Hanji, sitting in the aisle of the bus, reads aloud from a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey.

It’s nearly one when they arrive at the entrance to Algonquin Provincial Park, and drop off Hanji and Mike’s trips first -- each of the trips is taking a different route, with a different starting lake -- and it’s almost two o’clock when their trip is finally pulling up to the south shore of the lake that marks the beginning of their trip. Erwin heads over to the nearby office to pick up their permits while the rest of them unload the canoes off the trailer, and their gear off where it has been lashed to the roof of the bus.

It comes down to three canoes, three staff packs, five overstuffed, worn-out tumps, and eight people. It’s a co-ed trip, because Lookout barely had the maneuverability to worry about something like separating genders, and Levi ends up in the stern of The Scout with Petra in the middle and a quiet, nervous guy named Gelgar at the bow. There’s a soft wind blowing at their backs, the sun is interrupted by only a few clouds, the trees are throwing green onto the blue water, and Levi is beginning to feel at ease.

 _Of course_ , he thinks, as they begin to paddle out. _It’s wild out here, but it doesn’t feel like the city._

To his left, Erwin sterns Flynn with even strokes and efficiency that speaks to his years of experience; he’s keeping up with the rest of them, despite only two people in his boat. To his right, Auruo sterns a canoe named Maria. She’s even-keeled and well-balanced, one of the best canoes Lookout has. And while Auruo’s clearly inexperienced, Erwin forges on ahead, challenging the two other canoes to figure out how to keep up.

It’s a short day with no portages; they make it to site by four o’clock, unload the canoes and set up the tents, and have a fire going by five. Dinner is chili they had made the night before, frozen, and packed in Nalgene bottles -- not only is it an easy dinner, it also means extra water on hand for the coming days. As dinner heats up, Erwin tosses around apples, one to each.

“Um, Erwin,” Lynne says, as she’s almost finished. “What do we do with the --”

Erwin looks up, as he’s halfway through eating the core.

“--core. Hey, aren’t the seeds poisonous?”

“Try not to bite through them. If you can’t stomach it, throw the cores in the fire.” Erwin clears his throat. “Everything we don’t eat, we have to carry with us for the next eight days, as it slowly rots. There are no garbage cans out here.”

(Everyone eats their cores. Levi does too; he’s been doing that for three years. Trip changes you, in weird ways.)  
  


\----------------------

  
They paddle down a river the next day, singing Kenny Rogers songs as the sky gets more and more grey. They’ve covered more than two kilometers with packs and canoes on their backs, on top of all the paddling, and everyone’s sweating. By midafternoon, as they stop to eat a snack of oranges at the end of a portage, it starts to drip. The rain is a nice reprieve.

“Look at that sky,” Erwin says, as he pauses by Levi to collect his peels into a small plastic bag; they’ll be burning them in the dinner fire that night. “Looks like the kind of storm that could hover over us for a while.”

“Bad sign.”

“No, it’s a good sign.” Levi looks up, Erwin’s staring off, a hand on his chin. “Best that everyone gets used to bad weather, now, rather than having to figure it out on a camper trip. We’ll have to rig a tarp over the firepit tonight, and hope it lets up by morning.”

It doesn’t. By the next morning the rain is coming down in icy sheets, unseasonably cold for late June. There’s a bit of grumbling as they take down the tents and pack up the canoes, and to his credit Erwin doesn’t force anyone to act happy, just reminds them to wear their already wet socks so they have dry socks to wear in the evening.

To give them a chance to learn how to conduct a group on trip, Erwin nominates two people to act as leaders for the day, stern and navigate and make the call as to when meals should be eaten. On the third day it’s Petra and Luke; on the fourth, Henning and Lynne. It’s still cold and raining on the fifth day when Auruo and Gelgar decide to try to save time by having a floating lunch in the middle of a small lake. They lash the boats together with life jackets and something about the thought of PB&J bagels in the rain, when they could be eating at the shore under a tarp, is too much for Levi. He sticks his paddle in the water and drives the whole group to shore, without saying a word.

“...Oh,” Gelgar says, as the raft hits shore. Everyone looks to Levi; he shrugs his shoulders, steps out of the canoe (into ankle-deep water, but his feet are already soaked from three days of rain), and into the shade of a tree.

“We’re people, not animals,” Levi says, quietly. “Look out for the quiet ones. Just because someone isn’t saying anything, doesn’t mean they don’t need help.”  
  


\----------------------  
 

Something changes in the air, after that. Suddenly the trip is no longer a game, or even all that funny. The reality of the situation has sunk in; they’re cold and wet all day, and working harder than they ever have before, especially as the solid ground of the portages give way to mud. At the very least they’re not tired, as they eat and sleep more than enough. Levi is glad for the extra portions.

Levi co-leads with Erwin on the sixth day, a push day with almost six kilometers of portaging, including a brutal uphill three-k. Halfway through the uphill Petra’s legs simply give out on her; Levi finds her in the dirt at the side of the road, as Auruo is trying to put her tump on his front.

“That won’t do,” Levi says, putting his canoe down. “Petra, have you had anything to eat today?”

“N-no.” She struggles to her feet. “I wasn’t feeling well at breakfast, and I was too nervous at lunch, and --”

“--Here.” Levi pulls his Hanji Bar out of his pocket, and offers it to her. They’re a mess of peanut butter and chocolate and raisins and granola, but they do the trick, especially on a rainy day.

“Levi?”

“Eat that.” He takes off the staff pack, and grabs Petra’s tump from Auruo, throwing it on his back. “Carry my staff pack. It’s lighter. Auruo, look after her. Erwin’s at the rear with a first aid kit if she needs it.” He hoists up his canoe. “I’ll see you at the end.”

It’s almost dark by the time they get to the final lake for the day, and they hustle to find a campsite. The rain is letting up, and the sunset is deliriously red. A large bird lifts up into the sky, its silhouette black on pink. Someone starts singing _Land of the Silver Birch_ , and they start a round, in time with the strokes of their paddles.

They cook on their tiny camp stove, eat the cheesiest macaroni and cheese in the dark, laughing in spite of what they’ve been through, everyone passes out within minutes of setting the tents up. Levi would love to wash his face and lose consciousness, but there are dishes to do, and they have to pack up the food and float out the bear canoe. He squares his shoulders. If he doesn’t do it, it won’t get done.

“Wash the dishes, Levi,” Erwin says, handing him a headlamp, touting one of his own on his forehead. “I’ll pack up the bear canoe. Bring the dishes when you’re done, and we’ll paddle it out together.”

“Roger.” Levi can feel his head bobbing as he scrubs up, his eyes falling shut, only the cold of the water keep him awake. Finally, everything is done, the two of them load up Flynn with tumps full of food, tie Flynn to shore to keep it from floating away, and paddle it out in The Scout.

It’s dark, and starless, and very, very quiet. Once they reach the end of the rope Erwin makes an anchor out of a rock he grabbed on shore, ties it to a second rope, lashes the rope to a thwart of the boat and tosses the rock into the water. They’ve done this, together, once before: on the sixth night of Levi’s camper trip.

“Petra told me what you did today,” Erwin says, and Levi turns himself around in the bow seat to face him. “Don’t overburden yourself for the sake of others.”

“I did what I had to do. All that matters, out here, is that we get to site and eat dinner. Besides, we get to sleep in tomorrow. It’s a rest day.”

“All right.” Erwin motions towards his lap. “Levi, come here.”

“The hell are you going on about?” But he does as he is told, crawls to the end of the canoe and sits down, carefully lays his head in Erwin’s lap. Erwin reaches down, massages Levi’s temples and in a way it’s nice, to have someone thinking about his well-being.

“What you said, at lunch on the fifth day, after you paddled to shore. Was that meant for me?”

“No.” Levi doesn’t move, but flicks his eyes up to meet Erwin’s. “It’s something that everyone should know. I hope you’ve learned from that time.”

“I have. I’ve learned a lot from you.”

“Is that why you asked me to come back?”

“I saw something in you, something that I thought Lookout needed.”

“...Oh.”

“That’s it? ‘Oh’?” Erwin’s hands move to Levi’s neck, massaging him there, and despite himself Levi’s eyes slip closed and he lets out a little groan.

“Levi.”

“Hm?”

“Why is American beer like making love in a canoe?”

“You’re disgusting.” But he accepts the kiss, regardless.  
  


\----------------------  
 

As promised, Day 7 is a rest day. The weather has cleared up, a bit; it’s still grey, but no longer raining, and the temperature is picking up. They set up clotheslines to dry out wet gear and cook a breakfast of bannock pancakes with wild blueberries. Breakfast bleeds into a lunch of grilled cheese with tomato soup. A few brave folks go swimming despite the cold water. Levi goes in as well, a little away from everyone else, wanting to clean off six days of grime. Auruo finds him in the water.

“Sorry about that thing, in the lake, the other day,” he says.

“It’s okay. Know better next time. Never apologize for what you do under stress.”

Auruo nods, slowly, thoughtfully, and leaves to join the rest of the group. Levi thinks about the end of trip, two days off. It’ll be hard to be in a house of twenty-six after so long in a group of eight. Once he’s sufficiently clean he finds his way back to shore, to the firepit, where Erwin is tending the fire and reading a book next to a towel laid out on a fallen log they’re using as a bench. Levi checks the cover of the book. It’s Fifty Shades of Grey.

“Hanji made a bet with Mike and I that neither of us would be able to get through it before the end of the summer.” Erwin grimaces. “It’s sucked me in, I’m afraid.”

Levi can’t deal with him, but he also can’t deal with the cold, so he moves next to Erwin to get closer to the fire. The wind whispers in the jack pines and flat-leaf maples. It’s like before, except Levi isn’t recovering from self-inflicted deprivation, and Erwin is reading weird pornography. It’s almost intimate. It’s almost domestic. It should make Levi nervous, but instead he feels oddly calm. Auruo splashes Petra, and the group in the water start a water fight. Erwin reads something that makes him laugh. Eventually Levi gets redressed and stokes the fire to make a Spanish rice for dinner.

It’s not bad.  
  


\----------------------  
 

The bus ride home is quieter than the bus ride up, most people asleep, some people quietly sharing stories. It’s as though the moment trip ended, and they were safely on shore and in the bus, the fight just drained out of them. Levi sits up at the front with the window on one side and Hanji on the other, rests with his head on her shoulder as she keeps Erwin awake at the wheel. It’s an uneventful bus ride, some people so tired that they stay on the bus as the group returns to that same Tim’s for a celebratory return to civilization. Levi gets steeped tea. Erwin gets an extra large double-double with an extra shot of espresso.

When they get back to the house it’s almost six, and Erwin delegates tasks, prioritizing things that need to get done before they turn in for the night. Someone cooks up an insane amount of pasta as the rest of them unpack tumps, dispose of waste, and set out tents to air out overnight.

“I can’t wait to shower and smell like a real person,” Petra says, as they lay out tarps.

Levi looks at her. “This is the most real you’ll ever be,” he says, quietly.

By nine the work and clean-up is mostly done, and everyone is showered and in clean clothes. The group heads up to bed, Levi to Erwin’s office, where the director is working through the mountain of paperwork that has built up over nine days. The extra large coffee cup is empty next to two mugs, and the coffee machine in the corner is percolating.

He cleans up as Erwin signs cheques, makes lists, fills out forms. He heads out to the back porch with a full garbage bag, and when he comes back, Erwin’s slumped over at his desk, snoring softly.

“Wake up.” Erwin doesn’t wake up. Levi shoves his shoulder. “Wake up, you old fart.” Erwin mumbles something that sounds like _deploy the bear canoe_ , but blinks and blearily opens his eyes.

Levi helps him to his feet, lets Erwin lean on him as he walks him up the stairs, to the third-floor bathroom where the two of them wash up. Levi isn’t certain which room has Erwin’s bed, and doesn’t trust Erwin to not pass out on his way there or trip over anyone. He leads Erwin to his own room, to his mattress pushed up under the window, and guides Erwin down. He’ll scrounge up a clean sleeping bag and stay on the couch. As he turns to leave, though, Erwin grabs his leg, his eyes open.

“Stay,” he says. Levi is of two minds, but ultimately chooses a good sleep over an empty bed. He settles next to Erwin, still in his day clothes and too tired to care. Erwin mumbles that he did good. Levi wants to thank him for trusting him, but figures that Erwin already knows. Something hot knots in his belly, his cock twitches, and he thinks about American beer, wonders if sex with this man is inevitable.

“Shit,” he says.

“We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” Erwin murmurs. “Debrief the first trip.” And then he’s asleep. Levi isn’t sure if he meant to say _debrief the trip, first_ , or if he’s referring to something else. _Whatever_ , he thinks, as he falls asleep. _As long as nothing weird happens._

(Unfortunately, when he wakes up, he is the little spoon.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A camp I used to work at has the exact same tradition with empty buckets of peanut butter during staff trianing, I promise this is a real thing that real people sometimes do.
> 
> I've always imagined Erwin as the kind of person who would listen to Ke$ha and get suckered into reading Fifty Shades of Grey.
> 
> As always, comments, questions, and kudos are greatly appreciated!


	3. Trippings (Or: The Summer's All In Bloom)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “It doesn’t get any easier,” Levi says, flatly. Erwin regards him, then takes a sip.
> 
> “I wasn’t under the impression that you thought what we did was easy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sex! Well, at least, something approximating it.

Morning after trip’s always a rough one. Some people have their phones with them at breakfast, gingerly prodding nerve endings on the internet, trying to figure out what it means to them to be unconnected and reconnected, suddenly safe and sound inside a city. Levi doesn’t have enough people in his life who would care if he died on trip to bother contacting anyone, so he eats a bowl of oatmeal as Hanji gets him up-to-date with the state of the world. (It’s as shitty as usual.)

Then, of course, there’s an enormous pile of clean-up to do, because everything they own has been damp for nine days. Several staff are forced to see a doctor about infections, cuts left to fester against the elements; Nanaba comes back leaning on Mike with a slight limp, a wad of gauze, and enough antibiotics to kill every pest for miles. She’d gotten a pretty bad infection on her ass early on and had refused to tell anyone, choosing instead to sit on it for seven days and push through the pain.

“Coulda lost her left leg if she had left it much longer,” Hanji whispers, as she and Levi wash out their tents with a hose. “Mike freaked out. I’ve never seen him so upset.”

Levi’s not sure if he should be upset or impressed, so instead he shrugs and says, “Good thing we have free healthcare,” to which Hanji sniggers.

At lunch, Erwin reminds them to vote for the movies to watch during the staff social. They’re taking the bus to a double-feature at an outdoor theatre. Levi, who couldn’t care less, puts a tick mark under the column with the most votes, a romance followed by a slightly different romance. After they finish eating the eight of them are back together to debrief the trip, talking about what went right and what went wrong, what can be done better next time. To Levi’s surprise, Auruo notes that Levi held the trip together, and there’s a general air of agreement. Levi never tried to hold anything together. He just put his head down and made sure everyone was alive at the end of each day.

It’s sunny and cool all afternoon, perfect for setting up clotheslines and hanging things to dry. Someone rigs up an extension cord, brings a music player outside and puts in an old Vanessa Carlton CD, and nobody can remember the lyrics to anything, so eventually they’re all yelling _Barack Obama lives in a white house, George Bush lived in a white house, Bill Clinton lived in a white house_ in tune with the music. Beneath it all, Levi catches her singing _the summer’s ending soon_ , and he frowns.

( _It’s all right_ , she says. _And it’s nice not to be so alone._ )

“You made a good impression,” Erwin notes in the evening, as he’s working through camper referral forms and Levi’s sweeping dust out from under the cabinets. “A lot of people were asking if they could have you as a co-staff on their upcoming trips.”

“Whatever,” Levi says. “Point me at a canoe, and I’ll carry it.”

Erwin pauses, then puts down the file he was holding, pushes himself up. He walks over to Levi, who tilts his head up to meet his gaze, still holding the broom. “You don’t get it, do you?”

“There’s nothing to get.”

Erwin looms over him, takes the broom from Levi’s hands. “It’s not about canoes.” He places the broom against the wall, leans forward, places his hand on the wall beside Levi’s head. He smells of freshly disturbed dirt. “There’s something about you that makes everyone around you feel like what we’re doing is worthwhile. As though we’re more than a bunch of drifters wasting our time in the woods.”

“You’re really fucking tall,” Levi says.

Erwin snorts, then chuckles, then is laughing so hard his shoulders are shaking, his head drooping. Levi has no idea what to do other than to push himself up onto his toes and reach for that slightly stubbly chin (he’d have to get him to shave in the morning) and pull him down. 

Erwin’s eyes snap open in surprise just as their lips connect with such force that their noses bump and their teeth clack together, but when Levi makes a sound into him he relaxes into it and it’s hot and wet and slow, all tongue and the taste of coffee. Levi bites Erwin’s bottom lip and Erwin shoves him up against the wall, hard, shoves a knee between his legs and grinds against him. Levi presses his hand flat against the broad plane of Erwin’s chest, gasps into Erwin in a way that sounds more like a moan.

Erwin’s eyes are dark, intense, as they separate. Levi wipes a line of drool from the side of his mouth and narrows his eyes. Erwin’s hand snakes up, runs through Levi’s hair, then he grabs a fistful of hair, yanks Levi’s head backwards and kisses the side of his mouth, down his neck, pausing when he reaches the collar of Levi’s t-shirt.

“Jesus fuck, Erwin," and Levi hates the way his voice shakes, because he's out of control and it scares him, "Are we gonna just make out all night? Or can you not get it --” 

Erwin drops to his knees, chuckling, runs his hands down to Levi’s hips and unbuckles his belt, pops open the button on his jeans and slowly drags the fly down. “I wouldn’t dare,” he murmurs, as he palms Levi’s cock through his boxers. Levi makes a noise that he would be embarrassed of in any other situation; Erwin pushes his pants and boxers to his knees, runs his hands up the inside of Levi’s thighs slowly, almost reverently, before taking Levi’s balls gingerly in one hand and running a tongue on the underside of his cock, base to tip, tongues the slit, takes the head into his mouth.

It’s not the most erotic thing Levi’s ever seen, this gross old man in a blue plaid flannel shirt sucking him like he’s earned it, but he’ll take it.

Erwin’s not the best but it’s clear he’s done this before, because when he hollows his cheeks and strokes with his free hand, Levi feels it all over. “Shit, Erwin,” he manages, through clenched teeth. “Shit, that -- shit. Shit. I’m gonna come.”

He doubles over forward when it hits him, toes curling, fingers grasping at Erwin’s hair. It’s better than he thought. Erwin swallows, stands up, wipes his mouth with the back of his sleeve, as Levi comes down from nine days of trip.

“We should probably wash up and head to bed,” he says, finally. 

The offhand way with which he makes the statement -- like he’d just squirted silicone gel on a leaky gunnel, rather than had one of his staff’s dicks in his mouth -- forces a laugh out of Levi, and he follows Erwin upstairs, where most of the other staff are settling in for the night. Erwin’s mattress is in a room on the second floor, pushed up against the wall. And while Levi fully intends to reciprocate once he’s fairly certain that everyone around them is asleep, Erwin passes out as soon as his head hits the pillow, face-down with one arm thrown over Levi.

He wakes up with a numb left arm, a crick in his neck, and Erwin’s morning wood pushed up against his belly.

\----------------------

Erwin passes out a sheet to everyone to fill out. Levi peers down at what he’s holding in his hands; Erwin wants to know when his staff need time off (Levi doesn’t need any), if they’d prefer to guide boys’ or girls’ trips (Levi has no preference), if there is anyone they’d like to guide with (Erwin makes no promises, and Levi doesn’t care, although he writes Hanji to fill up space), if there is anyone they’d prefer not to guide with (Levi leaves that one empty). Finally, there’s the question, _would you like to guide a 15-day trip/leadership trip? These trips have four campers and two staff each._ Levi has no idea what the second one is, but the idea of a longer trip intrigues him, and he circles the 15-day. With the sheets filled in, Erwin retreats to his office with an entire summer to figure out.

They’re six days away from the first group of trips heading out, so while they finished cleaning up from training and staff trip they start prepping food and equipment for those poor saps who will end up guiding so soon. Five staff -- Mike and Hanji among them -- leave for a full-day bus driving exam. Even so, there are way too many cooks in the kitchen, and Levi finds himself wandering back into Erwin’s office, hoping that he can at least help put the logistical nightmare into place.

Erwin has his back to the door, scratching his head. He has names on post-it notes, and giant calendars for the months of July and August on the floor. Six staff in groups of three leave every three days, return every nine days, and on top of figuring in individual staff needs and desires there’s a problem of keeping track of what kids have been signed up to trip when, always having at least one staff of the same gender as the campers on the trip, not putting conflicting personalities together, factoring in who’s agreed to guide leadership and 15-days at the end of the summer, and making sure everyone has an adequate break between trips.

“Don’t have a heart attack,” Levi says, and Erwin turns towards him. “Let’s get this figured out.”

They spend the afternoon doing that, uppity pop music playing softly on the radio. Erwin tells a story of a conference he attended once where the keynote speaker promised that all the problems with kids these days would be solved if just spent more time communicating with plants; Levi asks him if that’s why there’s an herb garden out front of the Lookout house, and Erwin emphatically denies ever having telepathically communicated with basil. They’ve almost got it figured out when Moblit pokes his head in the door and tells them that dinner is ready.

As they eat in the living room, a quiet guy named Moses pulls Erwin aside. They have a short conversation in the hallway, and afterwards Erwin takes his food with him to his office and Moses slinks upstairs.

“It’s normal for one or two staff to quit over the course of the summer,” Erwin says, half an hour later when Levi rejoins him and they start figuring out the schedule all over again. “I figured it was going to be either him or Jurgen. Still a shame, though.”

“Gonna take away any of his certifications?”

“No, that would be more trouble than it’s worth. The shame is enough for him to take.”

There’s drinking and music out in the living room -- it’s another sangria night -- as they wrestle everything into place. Eventually, after calling up past staff who still live in the area asking them to donate nine days to a worthy cause, and securing Mike’s agreement to guide four rather than the usual three trips, everything’s in place, except for the blank space next to Levi’s name on the boys’ fifteen-day.

“I can do it myself,” Levi says.

“No, that won’t do.” Erwin pens his own name on the schedule. “I’ll call in Shadis. He can look after the office while I’m gone.”

“Erwin.”

“It’ll be nice to get out there before the end of summer.”

Levi thinks of fifteen days of sharing a tent with that man, and doesn’t know what to call the emotion that seizes him, so he calls it mild annoyance. “Whatever.”

Erwin pats his shoulder, in response. “Go get drunk, Levi. You deserve it.”

“And I suppose you’re going to fuck around working until you pass out on your desk again?”

“I’d like to finalize and present the schedule to the staff tomorrow morning. So yes, I suppose I’ll do just that.”

Levi grabs two mugs of sangria, one for Erwin. By the time they’re done everyone is passed out in various ways around the house, and Levi moves his stuff next to Erwin’s mattress.

\----------------------

With four days to go before the first round heads out -- Levi’s on the first boy’s trip, with Erd and Auruo -- Mike drives the bus into the drive-in, and the whole group climbs up onto the roof and into their sleeping bags. There’s way more popcorn and candy than twenty-five adults should be able to handle. On screen, a woman and a man collide into one another’s lives through a series of increasingly ridiculous happenstances.

Levi’s leaching body heat from Erwin, sipping tea and sharing his sleeping bag. Night descends. Levi’s bored. Halfway through the first of two films he lets his free hand wander onto Erwin’s clothed cock, finds the button and opens his fly. Erwin murmurs something about spilled tea as Levi pulls Erwin’s cock out, runs a thumb over the slit, and Erwin keeps two eyes forward, mindful of everyone around them.

Something about the situation seems so deliriously high school, as Levi hands his tea to Erwin and maneuvers around until he’s on top of him, surrounded by the dark and warmth of the sleeping bag, his nose in the hair at the base of that thick cock.

The music swells and someone must be scoring on screen as Levi takes his time, drags it out, lets his tongue feel his way around the growing erection while holding Erwin’s hips down as best he can. When Erwin comes he swallows, hears a sharp exhalation, pushes himself out of the bag. Erwin guides their mouths together. After they separate he whispers that he appreciates a man with good taste, and Levi tells him that he’s ridiculous and gross, takes the tea back.

The second film starts and Erwin pulls him close. Levi wonders when they got to be like this, fucking around like they’ve known each other for years.

(Nobody seems to wonder why Erwin’s sleeping bag is hanging on the line the next morning.)

\----------------------

Trip morning arrives, inevitably, with someone dumping their kid on the porch at 5:30 in the morning. Erd and Auruo corral their campers -- six sallow-eyed, sleepy, nervous city boys wearing expensive jeans and having no idea what they are about to be put through -- while Levi triple-checks the food and communal equipment, and his own gear, knives, compass, map, whistle.

As he’s carrying out the last bit of food, a dessert of brownies for Day 3 hutched in cardboard on which Petra had left encouraging notes in sharpie, and a bag of onions to be used whenever they can, he passes by the office. Even at the early hour, when most of the staff who are not heading out are still asleep, Erwin’s in his office on the phone double-checking last-minute details. Levi hovers by the door, not sure if he’s supposed to say or do something, but his duty comes first, and he heads out to where the group is keeping itself entertained.

Among all the movement and noise Hanji helps them load up their food and equipment tumps, and she and Levi climb up onto the roof of the bus to lash all the packs down while the rest of the staff load canoes onto the trailer. She reminds Levi to not fuck it up. Levi reminds her to not drive the bus into a ditch.

“Seriously, though,” she says, “You know what you’re doing. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise.”

“Whatever.”

With all the gear loaded, Hanji circle-checks the bus, and shouts for the counselors to load up the kids. The boys’ trip is on one side of the bus, the girls’ trip is on the other, and Mike takes a seat in the aisle to relieve Hanji on the drive back and to prevent any inappropriate aisle-crossing. Eight straight hours of bus driving with kids and canoes is, after all, probably illegal.

And nine straight days with the same six kids, in any other world, should also be illegal. It’s a rough trip; the route is too easy, the boys complain endlessly, and one of their portages is almost entirely washed out. On Day 3 a fight breaks out, on Day 4 one of the kids tries to run away (on an island campsite, no less), and on Day 6 they boil water for tea after dinner and one camper gets the bright idea to try to climb a tree with his cup of tea in hand. Everyone has a good laugh when he asks for another cup after he inevitably spills it, and Levi retires to his tent for a bit of alone time.

On Day 8 they finish their last portage, hitting the biggest lake in the park with rain and high winds, three canoes and nine people in a shitty situation, boats filling with water as wave after wave hits them broadside. Through the haze of rain the camper in Levi’s bow seat spots the orange marker demarcating a campsite; they gather the canoes together, lash them into a pontoon in a strange repetition of Levi’s staff trip, and Auruo gets the bright idea to tie a tarp to two paddles and hoist it like a sail. Levi thinks it’s stupid, but the boys love it, and suddenly survival becomes a game.

It’s a pretty little campsite on a tiny island poking out of the water, a thin path sloping up to flat ground for tents in the shade of a few hardy firs, blueberry bushes in abundance, and the fire pit near a rocky overhang facing west. The rain slows, then stops, soon after they get up the tents. Erd looks after the boys as they set up a rope swing and hurl themselves into the water fully clothed, shrieking with the kind of joy Levi had forgotten a fifteen-year-old was capable of possessing. Auruo pushes a canoe into the water where the kids are swimming and hops in, declaring himself one of Shadis’ cannibals, and makes up a game on the spot he calls Attack the Titan.

Levi’s so distracted by the spectacle that he accidentally adds way too much water to the dehydrated salsa he was trying to reconstitute. It was supposed to go with quesadillas, but became more like a soup. He tastes it, adds dehydrated vegetables and a bit of salt and pepper out of the spice kit, some leftover dehydrated beans from the bottom of the food pack, and dinner that night is grilled cheese on tortillas with spicy tomato soup.

The sun is setting as they clean out and oil the pan for dessert, a Hanji original called ‘sex in a pan’ -- throwing in all the leftover sweet items, stirring until nobody could wait any longer, and eating straight out of the pan on (somewhat) clean sticks. Levi uses a fork. It’s a beautiful red sunset, and one of the campers, the kid who’d spotted the campsite, mumbles something about wanting to do this thing again.

They do the trip rope ceremony as it’s getting dark, a thin rope with blue and green and white that goes on while they reminisce about eight rocky days together. The shared band represents their shared experiences, and the ability to overcome difficult days; on Levi’s left wrist it goes next to the gold and blue band from staff trip, and the faded red and black band from three years before.

“He’s a good kid, Eren,” Erd mentions, as they lie side-by-side in the staff tent that night, after putting the kids to bed. “Might make a good staff himself, one day.”

Levi snorts.

\----------------------

The night they get back, after all of the kids are sent home, Erwin takes them out to an twenty-four hour brunch place to celebrate the first round of trips getting back with no deaths. Over enough pancakes to kill a horse the six staff share the highlights and lowlights of their trips, what went wrong, what could go better. Erwin shares a tip for breaking up fights, and they all agree that girls are a hell of a lot easier to handle than boys.

Later, Levi sits on the fire escape, sips PBR and flips through his phone, trying to think about nothing in particular. Someone’s music is filtering up from the living room, hipster bullshit about driving to Chicago and all things coming to an end. He’s tired and restless and angry that two trips are already over, and angry that he’s angry. Erwin joins him, his mug of coffee full and steaming and smelling a little like Baileys.

“It doesn’t get any easier,” Levi says, flatly. Erwin regards him, then takes a sip.

“I wasn’t under the impression that you thought what we did was easy.”

Levi tucks his head into the crook of Erwin’s arm and they watch cars drift down the road, like boats in a very straight and very flat river. Erwin tells a story about how, when he was a kid, he used to pretend that cars had no people in them, and how unbearably lonely that made the streets feel. Levi tells him that’s stupid. Erwin chuckles, pulls Levi in a little tighter, because there’s a distinct chill in the air.

Hanji and Mike are both out; Nanaba’s in, only because her doctor had recommended physical restraint if she tried to get out on trip before her infection was fully healed. There are four trips out, and the emptiness in the Lookout house is, in a way that Levi has trouble naming or placing, hard. He thought he would appreciate the quiet and not miss the way twenty-five people could create an huge mess so easily. He used to think he’d miss the winter.

After their debrief the next morning, Levi cleans up in near-silence with Erd and Auruo, and everyone’s changed by what they’ve been through.

\----------------------

His second trip’s a girls’ trip. Petra’s still out on her first trip when Levi and Nanaba clear a corner of the food room to start packing; after they decide on a menu, Nanaba starts working through the food, leaving Levi to figure out gear. They spend a day quietly like that, each relying on the other, quietly, in their own spaces.

He’s coming upstairs to get something to eat when he notices Erwin in the front hall, throwing on a shirt and toeing on a pair of shoes. Erwin motions with his chin towards the front door; Levi follows, grabbing his own shoes as he does so.

“Moblit’s trip called for a full evac,” Erwin says, as they head for the bus. “I’m the only bus driver in the house right now, but I need someone to keep me awake.”

“Can’t wait until tomorrow?”

“It’s pretty serious. If we hustle, we should be able to make it there before dark.”

Levi hooks up the canoe trailer as Erwin does a circle-check. Soon, they’re on the highway, heading north. Evacs aren’t that unusual -- according to Erwin, there are usually two or three a summer -- but a same-day, full-trip evac is reserved for an unusually severe situation. Levi takes the bus seat right behind the driver. Erwin turns on the radio, and from the rigid line of his mouth and the tension in his arms, Levi can tell he’s upset.

“Hey,” Levi says, quietly. “Nobody’s dying.”

“That’s my hope.”

Heading towards a bad situation is almost worse than the situation itself. Erwin softly explains that one of the kids hadn’t wanted to be in the woods in the first place, and decided that the best way to get themselves off of trip was to put things in their mouth until they started puking. From the sound of Moblit’s harried satellite phone call, things hadn’t gotten too extreme, but who knew what could happen in the four hours it would take the bus to get to their closest access point. 

It’s a story that hits a little too close to home, and Levi knows that Erwin knows.

When they arrive, it’s Moblit and Gunther and five terrified children; they load the lot of them onto the bus and buy them all donuts before heading to the hospital, where Hanji looks more harried than Levi thought possible. The kid’s okay, at least, and is discharged soon after. Levi doesn’t want to think about what will happen to him when he gets back to his parents.

Hanji takes over driving the bus as Erwin gets on his cell phone, calling parents and explaining the situation. By the time they get back and return the kids it’s almost one in the morning. Hanji, delirious from all the stress, digs out her trip’s leftover desserts and makes an enormous batch of sex in a pan; everyone joins in, twelve (or so) people eating a cloyingly sweet nightmare mixed with some kind of rum, straight out of the pot.

Afterwards Levi joins Erwin in the shower and jacks him off, desperate to make some kind of meaning out of the whole story, Erwin tall and strong and very tired. Levi’s fascinated by the way Erwin holds the weight of all those people’s lives on his shoulders. Erwin bends him over and fucks him with his fingers, then his tongue, and Levi lets him waste hot water until he finds his prostate and it’s white-hot, the kind of slow fuck that makes him forget about everything but Erwin’s body on top of his.

Later he watches him sleep, finds himself worrying about the fall.


	4. Endings (Or: The Time-Out Game)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Levi doesn’t have anything to say to that. He has a lot of things he could ask. When he storms into Erwin’s office, all he can manage is, “Why the fuck are you still doing this?”
> 
> The truth of Levi's past, among other things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot of sex in this chapter! Both in quality and quantity, haha.

Four days into an otherwise perfect trip -- the weather is good and the girls are enamoured with Levi for some reason that is far beyond him, and though it pisses him off the way they act all googly-eyed around him, he supposes it’s better than them not listening to him at all -- they’re at a pretty little campsite on an island in the middle of the park. Levi’s cooking a dinner of chicken stew and dumplings (or, at least, an approximation of chicken and dumplings, with instant chicken soup thickened with mashed potato powder, and little balls of bannock flour mixed with water), Nanaba is collecting firewood, and the girls are playing in the water, when he hears Petra’s voice, a harsh little whisper, coming from some bushes by the waterside.

Her face is pale, her eyes red, when he brings the first aid kit to her. She’d been in the shallow water with the girls when her foot had gotten caught in between two rocks, and when he presses on it and she chokes out a sound, it’s clear that the middle three toes are broken. She’s terrified that the girls will find out. She wants, more than anything, for everything to go smoothly, and everyone to be happy. He bandages the broken toes together against her big toe, and Petra will certainly not be carrying a canoe for the next five days.

After dinner, as Petra entertains the girls with a book of fairy tales she’d managed to fit into her personal stuff sack, Levi and Nanaba discuss the logistics of an evacuation. They’re far enough away from an access point that the easiest thing to do would simply be to finish the trip, and with a paddle re-appropriated into a walking-stick Petra swears she’ll be able to make it on her own. Levi figures he’ll be doubling back for a second canoe for the next little while.

The next day, on their next portage, they discover that one of the campers had a hidden talent for carrying canoes all along -- after finding out that Petra was out of commission, the camper flips it onto her back with relative ease and proceeds down the path without a word. Levi flips up his own canoe and heads after her, wondering if she’s one of the quiet types holding back all her suffering behind grey eyes. As they share a handful of raisins while taking a break, she tells him, flatly, that she’d signed up for a trip to find out what kind of experience had her brother coming home so hyped up about Lookout.

(Her last name isn’t the same as her brother’s, but Levi knows better than to pry.)

They continue the conversation over a dinner of Shepherd’s Pie (the ‘meat’ is TVP, which Nanaba cooks with enough ketchup to drown a squirrel), about what it means to be strong enough for everyone else. Levi catches himself, midway through, in a moment he’s been through before. 

She gets Levi wondering what exactly Erwin had seen in him, so many years ago.

\----------------------

Petra sees herself to a doctor and comes back with some more bandages; her next trip is the last trip of the summer, a leadership trip, so she figures she’ll get a camper to carry a canoe for her as a leadership-building exercise. Levi has a little time off before his final trip, enough time to take a full breath and clean out the equipment room, spraying for mold and fixing broken tent zippers. People move around him, flowing in and out of the house, coming and going. He spends his evenings in Erwin’s office and his nights on Erwin’s mattress.

Two days pass like that, the dog days of summer hot and sticky, and on a particularly warm morning Levi wakes to a room empty but for Erwin and himself. He pushes himself under the covers to wake Erwin with his mouth, hotter and wetter than the air. Erwin gives his approval with a ruffle of his hair and softly worded terms of endearment, but stops Levi just before coming, flips him over and runs a tongue over the crook of his ass. It’s startlingly intimate, enough that Levi doesn’t think too much about how unhygienic it is.

“I don’t have lube,” Erwin says, probing with long, soft touches. “Do you?”

“No,” Levi says, at length, pushing his ass up into the touch. As if on cue they both look up, where a bottle of sunscreen is sitting, innocently, next to someone else’s mattress. Levi realizes at the same moment Erwin does.

Levi narrows his eyes, tilts his head to look at Erwin. “I swear to God, if you let that anywhere near my ass -- this isn’t some kind of goddamn gay fanfiction --”

Erwin laughs. “Turn over, Levi. Then we’ll get breakfast. Then lube. Do you have any condoms? I’m taking the day off.”

 _Day off_ means leaving his cell phone on vibrate beside the mattress, locking the door, and fucking each other over and over and over again to the tune of Florence and the Machine, pausing briefly for a lunch of peanut butter and jelly and banana sandwiches. Erwin puts chocolate chips on his. They eat while making pleasant conversation with Mike, who smells Erwin’s neck and definitely knows what’s going on. At one point, Erwin’s blindfolded with his pink shorts, on the phone with the Board of Directors trying to drum up some extra funds for cream cheese while Levi is riding him like he means it, and when Levi comes with a gasp Erwin manages to shield the phone just in time and murmurs “No, no, just someone dropping a pan in the kitchen --”

Florence sings about overflow and Erwin hangs up just in time, comes with a grunt and a sigh and Levi’s hands on his chest.

After a shower they join the rest of the crew for dinner. Mike and Nanaba pull them aside to talk about dividing up equipment for the fifteen-days, particularly fuel for the camp stoves, and then Erwin’s back in his office. Levi washes dishes, completely spent. Hanji slides up next to him, drying plates and cups.

“Given any thought to where you’ll be in the fall?”

Levi doesn’t want to say _yes_ , but he has -- quite a lot. That’s the problem with the summer. “Back to school. Second year.”

“Ah, you city kids grow up so fast.” She ruffles his hair with a wet hand, and he doesn’t have the energy to swat it away. “I’m back up north -- the school’s bringing in two more kids, might be able to bring me on full time, contract and everything.” Hanji works at an outdoor school for young offenders in open custody. She goes on, about what people are getting back to when the dream is over: Moblit scored an internship at an accounting firm, Mike’s going to grad school for mechanical engineering, Nanaba back to her kinestheology program out west, where she studies nutrition. Finally, she shakes her head.

“Erwin’s back to his old teaching gig, same place I’m at -- he was how I heard about Lookout in the first place. Heard he was offered a really nice deal running an adventure program in the big city, you know, fancy high ropes courses for rich kids. Turned it down ‘cause he wanted summers off to come back here.”

Levi doesn’t have anything to say to that. He has a lot of things he could ask. When he storms into Erwin’s office, all he can manage is, “Why the fuck are you still doing this?” 

Erwin puts down his pencil, stares up over a food order form. “I have a disease of the soul,” he says, way more thoughtful than any man his age should be capable of being, especially after a literal six-hour marathon of fucking. “I thought it was wanderlust, but one day I was sitting in a café in Brazil, and I realized I was homesick. Some people can wander forever, but I wanted a home to come back to.”

That night Levi starts prepping food for the dehydrator, and someone puts on an old CD. Against softly pulsing club music a British woman croons _you can travel the world but you can’t run away from the person you are in your heart_. Levi switches to the radio.

\----------------------

It was a stupid thing, really.

Levi was mad at his stepmother, but he was in the middle of the woods, and had no way of getting at her for signing him up for a canoe trip while the trip was still happening. He was mad at Erwin, tall, calculating, smooth and polished, a city boy dicking around with canoes for a good note on a resume. Erwin he could get at, and he spent the first night thinking about how to make life miserable for that insanely well-coiffed counselor.

But Erwin was also his ticket out of the woods, inasmuch as Levi wasn’t sure how well the rest of trip would go if -- say -- the man keeled over from stove fuel in his water bottle. Levi stopped eating on the second day, moved stuff around on his plate, threw stuff into the forest when no-one was looking. He couldn’t sleep on the second night or any night thereafter, haunted by a spectre he couldn’t name. He stopped drinking water on the fourth day. By then, thoughts of revenge had been replaced by waking nightmares of slow-moving shapes in the forest. But he carried things when he was told to, paddled hard, and never, ever spoke unless directly spoken to.

On the sixth day they had a massive portage, elegantly nicknamed the Big Ho (it connected Big Crow and Hogan Lake -- at least, that’s what Ilse said), a three-point-seven kilometer hell that opened with a kilometer and a half of steep uphill. Levi put on his pack and marched behind Erwin carrying a canoe, eyes on the ground, thoughts slippery. When they got to the top Erwin had set the canoe down for a break, and Levi sat down in the shade of a tree, and when the time came to start at it again he found he couldn’t get up. Erwin asked him a question, but Erwin was three thousand miles away in the southern United States where money was green. Levi mumbled something in response, about how gross it was to reach into a communal bag of trail mix.

He blinked. Suddenly it wasn’t as light out, and he was under a shelter made out of a tarp strung up in some trees, lying under four layers of unzipped sleeping bags. He shifted. Someone had put a sweater four sizes too large on him. His mouth was dry. Moving too much sent a wave of nausea up from his stomach, so he elected not to move at all.

“Hey.” Someone shifted, stood up just outside the tarp shelter. It was then that he recognized the light pitter-patter of rain. Erwin crawled next to him on all fours; he was in a t-shirt under his raincoat. He pressed a hand to Levi’s forehead, then looked into his eyes.

“You awake?”

Levi nodded, and the look of relief that swept across Erwin could have knocked the breath out of him. Erwin thrust a water bottle at him. “Drink.”

Levi shook his head. The knot between Erwin’s eyes reappeared. “That’s an order. You need to drink.”

Rehydration salts weren’t in the standard first-aid kit, but Nile was such a boy scout that he’d packed a bunch of powdered Gatorade, the good stuff for mornings after heavy drinking. Levi drank a full litre, slowly, with coaxing. It tasted of lemon-lime and Levi wondered if the tang was from all the electrolytes. He chuckled. Erwin asked him what was up, and Levi didn’t have the words to tell him that he’d thought of _electrolytes, turbolytes, powerlytes, more lights than your body has room for._ Lights danced before his eyes, as if in response.

After the first litre Erwin took the bottle, wiped the side of Levi’s mouth, and handed him a second bottle with cherry-flavoured water. As he drank Erwin told him that Levi had passed out and as he was moving him into the shade, thinking it was heat stroke, he’d noticed all the signs of dehydration. Ilse and Nile were with the rest of the boys, doing who-knows-what, but they had all the tents up fifty metres down the path, dinner cooking on their shitty little camp stove, and were preparing for a night on the portage.

“You came to a couple of times over the last few hours,” Erwin said, quietly, sitting back on his haunches. “Said some things. I don’t have to tell Nile or Ilse, or your mother, if you don’t want me to.”

Levi didn’t want him to. He finished the second bottle and handed it to Erwin, who excused himself to get more water. Levi lay back and rested a hand on his forehead -- someone had bundled up a bunch of clothes under his head, as a makeshift pillow -- and thought about how he’d managed to get himself into a really shitty situation.

Erwin came back with a full bottle of water and a bowl of what looked like some kind of soup, apologizing that it was the only meal they could throw together. Levi ate tiny spoonfuls, Erwin taking over when it was clear that his hands were shaking too hard to use a spoon properly, much to Levi’s chagrin and dark, burning shame. When he was done it was nearly dark. Erwin started to gather up the sleeping bags, shoved them under one arm, and put his other arm under Levi’s.

“You’re in the staff tent tonight,” he said, with a certain finality that Levi would come to associate with shit hitting the fan. Levi stood up, slowly, but as he was straightening his legs vertigo slammed into him hard, and darkness rushed up at him.

When he awoke again it was dark, very dark. He was lying in a sleeping bag, in a tent, and someone was pressed right up against him. A rhythmic sound too heavy for rain resounded -- was it hail? As if a shitty situation couldn’t get any worse. A watch beeped. Erwin -- it was Erwin -- groaned, rolled over, checked the watch, rolled back over, and held the glow of the watch display up to Levi’s face. Levi blinked twice.

“Are you alive?”

“I’m alive.”

Erwin put the watch back, mumbled something about being glad, and settled back down. Levi closed his eyes and let sleep find him, thinking that a man like that was worth staying alive for.

\----------------------

They pack.

Erwin does food, Levi does equipment. Halfway through their first day of packing Shadis shows up, and after a quick conference with Erwin heads straight into the office and shuts the door behind him. By dinner, Levi’s stomach is tight with anticipation.

They drink warm beer on the front porch and talk about normal things, things that university students and working adults worry about, like taxes, and climate change, and the future. The rest of the staff who aren’t out on trip join them one by one. Levi realizes that, without meaning to, he’d found a whole lot of people he doesn't mind being around.

Later, Erwin puts down some sleeping bags on the fire escape landing and lies on them, and Levi mounts him, groin to groin. Levi takes off his shirt. Erwin runs two hands over his torso, reverently, until Levi gets annoyed.

“Just fucking -- ah,” he says, catching his breath when Erwin runs a hand over his clothed cock. “Shit. Do that again.”

Erwin doesn’t, ghosts his hands over his chest and stomach, watches intensely as the muscles move beneath his skin. “You’re strong,” he murmurs. “Very strong.”

Levi has no idea how to respond to that. “Thanks,” he says, “I carry canoes. And run after campers.”

Erwin laughs, and lets Levi take charge. Levi runs his tongue over the thick vein on the underside of Erwin’s cock precisely fifteen times, one for each day they’re going to have to keep their hands off of one another. After the fourth, Erwin suggests the ‘time out’ game on Day 8, where each camper and staff walk off into the woods in different directions and everyone has twenty minutes of alone time that nobody asks about, afterwards; after the sixth time, when Levi starts wrapping his lips around the head and sucking lightly, Erwin shuts up altogether.

As he fucks himself onto Erwin the question of what comes next hangs heavy in the air, like if Levi’s ever going to fuck Erwin, and what they’re going to do when they part ways at the end of the summer. Then Erwin grabs onto Levi by the small of his back and bucks his hips, and the end of summer is a long, long way away.

\----------------------

It’s a grey morning when they load eight campers and four staff onto the bus, and Levi’s not certain how they managed to get fifteen days of food into the nine-day tumps, but it’s probably for the best that there are no portages on the first day. Jaeger and his sister are back, his head resting on her shoulder on their shared seat.

The drive up feels like the drive up for staff trip: too long and too short, with a heavy kind of anticipation in the air. They drop the girls’ trip off, first, Jaeger’s sister pausing a little too long in her goodbye, trying to get him to promise not to get hurt. She glares at Levi, and Levi knows that if the kid bites it, she’ll go for his throat. He hasn’t the heart to tell her that Jaeger has the self-protective instincts of a ball of lint -- but, well, maybe it’s one of the things that makes him charming.

Hanji entertains the boys as Levi and Erwin unload the gear and pack it into two canoes -- Levi scored The Scout, and Erwin’s sterning a waterlogged mess called The Titan, as almost every other decent boat was out on trip -- and as soon as the boats are loaded, Erwin starts moving the boys into formation.

“Good luck out there,” Hanji says, patting Levi on the shoulder. “A fifteen-day’s a whole new ball game. Look out for Erwin, okay? He can get a little wrapped up in his own head sometimes.”

Levi shrugs.

“And remember your staff contract. No sex while campers are still --”

Levi grabs her ponytail and tugs, hard. She goes down laughing. There’s no time to think about how many people know, because Erwin is beckoning him over. Hanji shoves them off with a foot, and they’re on their way.

Jaeger’s in a fabulous mood but it’s pretty clear that he’s really nervous as well, chattering about how a friend of his wanted to come on the fifteen-day trip but got rejected for being too small. Levi tunes him out and hopes it doesn’t rain until later on in the trip. They eat soup that night, a chowder Erwin somehow cooked up with soy milk powder, and Erwin gets out the map. They’re heading to a lake far in the interior called Radiant Lake, a place Levi’s never been to but has heard a lot about, from Hanji and Mike, and they’ll be crossing the Big Ho on Day 3. The boys groan, but they seem up to the challenge. They make banana boats, scooping out the fruit and stuffing them with chocolate and marshmallows, and the boys start a few harmless games of one-upmanship that could turn into a fight club, if Levi and Erwin aren’t careful. Night falls with a chill wind, the boys are herded into their tent, and Erwin reads them a good-night story out of a copy of World War Z. The boys eagerly discuss zombie contingency plans.

Later that night they’re in the staff tent, a pathetically small two-person tent that houses Erwin to his ankles, forcing him to curl up in his sleeping bag. Levi wonders about the campers’ groaning, and Erwin assures him that it’s normal. 

“Even though they know what they’re getting into, it’s hard work.” He’s scribbling in the staff log, about the wind conditions and camper mentalities. “We ask a lot out of them, at their age.” 

He changes out of his pink shorts (they double, Levi’s learned, as swim shorts, and a half-decent blindfold) and into a pair of boxers. Erwin overheats easily; Levi’s in a sweatshirt and sweatpants. He’s still cold. Erwin worms his way over and curls around him, and Levi isn’t cold anymore.

\----------------------

Levi learns important things about Erwin, like that he doesn’t mind the boys’ hero-worship of his size and shape, but he always redirects the conversation if they start putting themselves down. He’s quick with a smile and a little digestible bit of information -- “These clovers are edible, they taste like lemon, try one and see what you think” -- which Levi supposes comes from his background in teaching. Levi had thought the trivia would bore them, but by Day 3 they’re all pointing out how the flat-leaf trees give way to conifers the further they push north, and Levi’s a little impressed.

Day 3 also means the Big Ho. They’ve set aside the full day for the portage. Levi’s mouth is a little dry as they pull up. He takes a drink from his water bottle; Erwin sidles up his canoe next to him.

“You’ll be fine,” Erwin says, and it’s not a question, or an order, but an acknowledgement. And he’s right, of course -- it isn’t a matter of life and death, just a portage on a canoe trip, just a walk in the park.

Old habits die hard, though, and Erwin lets Levi take the lead so that he can bring up the rear with the first aid kit. Levi hoists up his canoe, ignores Jaeger who really wants to try carrying a canoe himself (“Maybe later,” Erwin says with a chuckle, “On a bit of a flatter portage”) and starts walking.

The place hasn’t changed much, in three years. Same shitty rocky incline, same twisting road worn into the ground by countless people before them, Levi thinks he recognizes the tree he passed out under. In a way, that was one of the nice things about trip -- in a world that moved at a frenetic pace, you could always be sure that the Big Ho would be just as awful year after year.

They stop for bagels with cream cheese, sliced apples, and cinnamon, and it’s their last taste of fresh fruit for the rest of trip; they’ll be having a stir fry with broccoli, onion, carrots and green bell peppers at dinner, and that will be their last fresh greens, after which it’s dehydrated fruits and veg until the end of trip. They hadn’t even packed fresh onions, their size and shape too bulky to handle. Levi’s the kind of person who needs a green with every meal, but he trusts Erwin’s judgement on this one.

By the end of the day it takes a little persuasion to get the boys to pick up their tumps and keep walking, but they’re also joking about about how hell is an endless and buggy portage, and Levi can’t help but agree. Dinner that night has a jubilant feel to it, and Erwin reminds them that things worth doing are hardly ever easy.

Tiredness hits Levi like a sack of bricks as they put the boys to bed. Erwin tells him to go to sleep, that he’ll handle the dishes and the bear canoe, but Levi’s having none of that. They paddle the bear canoe out, Levi crawls over and puts his head in Erwin’s lap, and Erwin teaches him about summer constellations -- the Big Dipper, Cassiopeia, Hercules, Sagittarius. As they search for Polaris a shooting star arcs over the top of the sky, then another. It’s high season for meteor showers. Erwin tells Levi to make a wish.

\----------------------

The campers have way too much energy for their age, and looking after them is a full-time job: when they’re not on the water or portaging, the kids want to try to rig a fishing rod, or a rope swing, or re-enact that song from that Disney film from start to finish. Levi and Erwin move between taking care of the kids and taking care of the trip; Erwin’s self-care is one-on-one time with a camper, and Levi’s is time alone tending the fire or cooking a meal, and between the two of them they make it work.

They steal moments together, in the early mornings before they have to wake the campers up, and in the evenings after the campers have gone to bed. Levi learns other things about Erwin, like that he’d lost his father at a young age, and that he’d signed up for Lookout his first summer on a lark after seeing a poster advertising staff positions, and that he and Nile had gone to school together and had both pursued the same woman. “She had a lovely bearing,” he says, “Fair hair, and a certain way of calming everyone around her. She hated the thought of Nile and I out on trip. Nile chose her. I chose the woods.”

Levi doesn’t have much to say to that. Erwin sighs. “I respect that we don’t have the best reputation, for what we do -- bunch of hippies and drifters and brown-nosers carting kids off into the woods -- but I’d like to think that what we do is for the best. Sometimes one trip can change someone’s life, forever.”

“Shut up,” Levi says, embarrassed. It’s dark, and they’re sitting by the fire pit, Erwin’s arm over Levi’s shoulder. To fill the silence Levi tells Erwin about his stepmother, who wasn’t half-bad but took no shit from him, and whom he was more than happy to leave behind forever when he moved out at nineteen. 

“So, what’s next?” Erwin turns his head, his eyes catching the light of a fading fire. “Have you thought about coming back to Lookout next summer?”

The speed at which _obviously_ pops into Levi’s head shocks him, and makes him angry, so he bites his tongue. “Maybe,” he says, instead. “Depends on whether or not I can get a part-time job during the school year. Student loans.”

“Ah.”

Erwin leans down, and Levi wonders when he became the kind of person who would look forward to stealing kisses in the dark, but just as they’re about to meet there’s a shuffling sound from the camper tent, and they pull apart. Jaeger stumbles out with a flashlight in hand, rubbing at his eyes as he starts to pull down his shorts.

“Hey,” Levi says, loud enough to startle the kid but (hopefully) quiet enough to not wake up the rest of them. “Twenty steps away from the tent, Jaeger. That’s fucking disgusting.”

“And it attracts bears,” Erwin adds. Levi socks him in the arm. “Seriously, it does.”

Erwin laughs. After Jaeger’s done his business in the dark of the trees they bid him goodnight, put out the fire, and retire to their tent. Erwin scribbles a few notes in the log, then leans over to Levi, who’s still dressing, and peppers the side of his throat with kisses. Rules are rules, though, and he doesn’t go any farther than that, leaving Levi caught in a state of half anticipating the end of trip, and half dreading it.

\----------------------

On Day 7 it starts raining. Late in the afternoon on Day 9 they’re pushing through a one-kilometre portage that’s buggy as hell, and then paddling a river system, the wind still and the rain coming down in a single sheet that obscures the world ten feet in front of them. Everyone’s exhausted, but they have a rest day coming up, and when the river opens up into Radiant Lake Levi suddenly understands what all the fuss is about.

An accident of geography has left the lake flat and shallow, waist-deep water giving way to white sediment that turns the water deliriously silver against the grey of the sky. They paddle through a curtain of rain silently, reverently, two days of complaints lost against the stark beauty of an empty world. It’s a sight to behold. Levi wonders if he’ll ever feel this way again.

Erwin pulls out his map, waterproofed with clear tape, and orients the group towards a campsite hidden among giant fir trees. They pull the canoes up to shore, disembark and unload with ease borne of nine days together, throw up the tents and herd the boys in to get warm and dry. Levi scrounges up some only slightly damp firewood from under rocks and below trees while Erwin sets up a kitchen tarp, and soon enough they’re coaxing a fire to life, boiling water for hot chocolate.

Dinner is supposed to be rice and lentils, but the boys need something heartier, so Erwin heats up a pan with oil, reconstitutes some onion and garlic with TVP, pulls out the ketchup and Worcestershire sauce and a bag of dehydrated peas and tomato slices, starts a huge batch of Sloppy Joes. The boys start filtering out of the tent with the smell of chocolate, sip warm drinks as dinner cooks. Someone busts out a deck of cards and starts up a game of poker, using pieces of tree bark as chips. It’s not bad.

By evening the rain has slowed, and Erwin teaches the boys the Trucker’s Hitch, so that everyone can throw a hand in with setting up clotheslines. They celebrate the end of the rain with an apple crisp and a swim, the water warm, the boys counting how many dead bugs they find in their hair. It promises to be a clear and cold night, and as stars begin to appear as they’re brushing their teeth, the boys start asking for the chance to sleep outside. Erwin hesitates, not sure that such a thing is entirely within camp rules, but Levi figures that they’ll either have a pleasant night, or return to the tent.

They let the boys set up a little sleeping area as they put out the bear canoe, and eventually the six of them are bundled up in sweaters and sleeping bags on a laid-out tarp, their heads together. Erwin asks Levi to point out some constellations, which Levi does to the best of his ability.

It’s very late at night when Levi wakes up, the tip of his nose numb. The boys are gone. He rolls out of his sleeping bag, fumbles around for Erwin’s flashlight and checks on the camper tent; they’re all in there, just as he predicted. He nudges at Erwin’s shoulders until the director blinks, opens his eyes.

“They’re all asleep,” Levi whispers. “Let’s head back to our tent.”

Erwin closes his eyes and purses his lips. Levi obliges him, kisses his mouth gently. Erwin has a way of moving on trip that’s so different from how he conducts himself in the city, a certain ease in his bearing that Levi decides he likes. 

In the morning they make pancakes, enjoy a cool but steadily warming day on a very blue lake, and then there are five days left.

\----------------------

On the fourteenth night they eat rice and lentils for dinner and sex in a pan for dessert, scraping at the bottom of empty food tumps. Erwin pulls out the trip rope and six small beads. The beads, he explains, differentiate their trip from the others. It’s a black rope with blue and red that goes next to Levi’s other three, and a small blue and white bead.

Levi isn’t sure what to make of all of it. The campers sleep on the bus on the way home, dirty and exhausted, except for the siblings; she checks him for injuries as he tells her about Radiant Lake and coniferous trees. Nanaba looks a little worse for wear, the colour of her scrapes suggesting that her infection has come back. Levi gives up on pretenses and rests his head on Erwin’s shoulder, Mike pilots the bus and Erd, who’d driven the bus up to the park, keeps an eye on the campers.

When they get back they hand the kids off to waiting parents. Levi sees the siblings off in their father’s car as Erwin has a short conversation with Shadis, then shakes the former director’s hand. Shadis nods to Levi and sees himself out.

“Record low number of evacs this summer,” Erwin says, back in his chair and to his forms, “Although there are two more trips to get back, so I suppose we shouldn’t count our chickens yet. Seems the Board of Directors is pleased. Agreed to fund an extra position starting next summer.”

Levi turns on his heels, making a mental list of things to set out to air overnight, things he needs to get done before the morning.

“A co-director. The Board wants me to take on a co-director.”

He’s out the door, out the house, down the porch steps. In silence he and Mike empty their tumps, lay out their gear on tarps: nearly empty bags of soggy trail mix, tiny bags of leftover TVP, emergency meals still untouched, mostly empty bottles of stove fuel. Everything looks and feels like it’s been out in the woods for too long, the worn-out tumps sagging, the canoes with rivets popping out, Levi’s mind feeling tired and old. Something’s changed. Levi wants Hanji to barrel out and say something stupid, but she’s out on trip with Petra. The light in the office flicks off. Erwin steps outside and helps them finish up, then guides Levi up the stairs and into the shower.

Hot water feels strangely undeserved. Erwin pushes Levi against the wall, kisses him. Levi warms up all over. When he slides down Erwin and takes his cock in his hands, Erwin grabs a bottle of shampoo and lathers up Levi’s hair, and Levi laughs with Erwin in his mouth. Then it’s all business, washing out trip. There are people in Erwin’s bedroom, and in Levi’s old room, so they move a mattress and two clean sleeping bags into the office.

There’s a moment when Erwin is lying on the mattress, looking Levi up and down, the only light coming from a streetlight outside. They’re both naked. Erwin’s eyes are as blue as Radiant Lake, and Levi steps over to him, purposefully, slowly. He lowers himself onto Erwin, leans over until his mouth is next to Erwin’s ear.

“I want to fuck you,” he says, quietly, “Until neither of us is thinking about the end of summer.”

He watches Erwin’s Adam’s apple bob, as the director swallows, then nods. That’s when Levi realizes that the lube and condoms are upstairs, and Erwin catches his eyes widening and his face reddening at the realization. Erwin laughs, a rumble that Levi feels in his chest, and Levi can’t help but snicker, and he throws on his sweatshirt and sweatpants and makes haste.

Erwin’s sensitive, inside. They’re both oversensitized from fifteen days and a whole summer of being so close to one another. Levi gets two fingers in before he finds Erwin’s prostate, and the blond closes his eyes and looks so wonderful that Levi runs his other hand up to Erwin’s cock, lets him come just like that. Erwin offers to blow him in return. Levi kneels, sits back on his feet. It’s a stupidly erotic parody of that time he had Erwin’s head in his lap during staff training, as he died from a fake heart attack. He pushes that thought far, far away, focuses instead on the sight of Erwin’s eyelashes as he knits his brow in concentration. 

When Levi comes he feels it as relief, a release of tension that washes over him and leaves him spent. Erwin swallows and wipes his mouth, then motions into his sleeping bag.

“I’ll get my fuck before the summer’s over,” Levi mumbles, and he can feel Erwin’s smile as he tucks himself into the crook of his arm, Erwin soft and warm against him, feeling as though he’s floating as he falls asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been told that there are people out there who haven't heard the joke in the second chapter, it goes like this: why is American beer like making love in a canoe? They're both fucking near water.
> 
> Next chapter will be the last, although there might be an epilogue. In other, more exciting news, I'm going back to the camp that inspired this fic this coming summer! Hopefully none of you guys will be there, though...(laughs nervously)
> 
> You can always find me on [tumblr!](http://kanthia.tumblr.com/) As always, kudos and comments are appreciated. I love you guys <3


	5. Intermission: That Morning on Burnt Island Lake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sappy. So sappy. Two saps watch the sun rise. 
> 
> Erwin wears a toque and crocs.

There’s this joke among canoe trippers, made all the more enduring by the fact that it is more or less true, that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who go into the wilderness and come out looking as though they’ve been dragged through hell, and those who emerge looking as fresh as the day they left the city. Erwin is among the former -- send him out on a backcountry trip and within the day he’ll be scraped, bruised, and happy with his place in the world, although badly in need of a shave. Levi, who brings a hairbrush on trip and washes his face every evening, is quite noticeably among the latter (and, of course, quite vocal about Erwin’s needing to shave).

It’s Day 14, the second-last morning, when Erwin’s jolted awake from a dreamless sleep to the grey dark and a conspicuous emptiness next to him in the staff tent. He fumbles for his flashlight, confirms that Levi’s sleeping bag is empty, and also that it’s 5:30 in the morning, a full hour before Erwin’s watch alarm is set to go off. Such an absence usually sets off no warning bells -- most likely Levi’s off emptying his bladder-- but a soft scraping outside, and the sound of something disturbing the water down by the lake, gets Erwin out of his sleeping bag. He pulls on his toque and crocs, unfolds the sweater he’d balled up as a pillow and throws it on, grabs his flashlight, unzips the tent door and in a rather ungainly manner rolls out into the predawn, mid August chill.

It’s a pretty little campsite on a point, east-facing. The round orb of the sun peeking over the black line of the forest paints Levi’s body in a perfect silhouette, and when he turns towards the sound of someone getting out of the tent, Erwin is almost sorry to see the image disturbed. Levi motions with his chin for Erwin to join him. 

Even in the city Levi’s a notoriously light sleeper, and so Erwin doesn’t feel the need to ask any specific questions, just makes his way over as quietly as he can, careful not to disturb the four campers sleeping in their own tent. Levi has his fleece sweater zipped all the way up; the way the elbow patches fall just below where his elbows should be highlights the fact that it’s a little too large for him, and for some reason, it gets a warm feeling in Erwin’s stomach.

“Couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d watch the sun rise,” Levi murmurs, almost inaudibly, when Erwin is close enough to hear. 

In the distance, two loons wail back and forth, searching one another out. Erwin is struck, quite suddenly and honestly, by the thought that the calls of loons are always filtered by distance and a body of water -- he’d never seen one, nor heard one, in captivity. Beautiful things made more beautiful by their proper context.

(He chuckles softly at the metaphor. As if it wasn’t obvious enough, the encroaching daylight reveals that Levi is, indeed, almost smiling. He’s beautiful when he almost smiles.)

“It’s beautiful,” Erwin whispers back. Levi makes a noise as though he agrees, and Erwin places his hand on the back of Levi’s neck, finds the round patch of rough, red skin from a long summer of carrying canoes -- the portage patch, a dermal abrasion that, like the canoer’s tan (a particularly dark tan of the tops of the thighs down to the knees), marks how certain kinds of work have a way of writing themselves onto one’s own skin.

“It’s hard.” The sun pulls out of the treeline, throwing yellows and blues into the world. “This thing we do. It’s not easy.”

Fifteen days is a long time to be away from home. “It’s not meant to be.”

“But it’s good.”

“It’s okay for this to be difficult.”

Levi’s silent, at that. Erwin keeps his hand on his neck, strokes the fine hairs at the base of Levi’s undercut. Somewhere an owl hoots, sorry to see the night end. 

“Say I wanted to stay,” Levi says, after a while. “Say I wanted to come back, next summer. Would you --”

“--I’d still be here.”

It’s strange how quickly the sun rises, once it’s ready to come up. “The sky looks like shit. It needs some pink.”

“It’ll be a nice day, though. You know what they say, red sky at night, sailors’ delight...”

“I know, Erwin.”

(Erwin loves this thing they do, to death. Erwin is also fond of Levi. Erwin is so fond of Levi that it aches.)

They stay like that for a long time, until Levi remarks that Erwin looks stupid in his crocs and toque, and Erwin returns that Levi looks lovely in his slightly too-large sweater, and Levi’s blush adds just the right amount of pink to the morning. By the time they return to the tent it’s just about time to get up, and so they decide that the group has earned a sleep-in, stealing an extra half-hour of the morning to themselves, and the woods, and the quiet sounds of the approach of day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Cause you're a sky, you're a sky full of stars  
> Such a heavenly view  
> You're such a heavenly view
> 
>  
> 
> (Come find me on [tumblr!](http://kanthia.tumblr.com/))


	6. Outlook (Or: An Encounter With Some Big-Ass Trees)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His hands flee to his mouth but it’s too late, the words are out there and there is no going back.
> 
> (September.)

The Lookout house is a student house during the school year, and so it must be cleaned out and presentable by the end of the summer. The clean-up starts just before the last trips get back, a flurry of activity that Levi directs to his standards. Equipment and eating utensils are packed in boxes, clothing strewn about the house returned to owners, posters peeled from walls revealing chipped paint, home slowly becomes a house once again.

Four days after Levi’s last trip came back, Erwin and Mike drive the bus up to pick up the last two trips, and after the kids are sent home a ripple goes through the team for a summer well done. Cleaning is put aside for shitty champagne and shittier wine. Erwin, who’s driving himself up a wall crunching numbers for his end-of-summer report, drinks a little too much and makes terrible jokes until Levi puts him to bed.

Levi wonders if people grow connected by the shit they survive together, if that’s a normal way to feel, or if the chill August air is making him overly sentimental. It’s not that he wants the summer to keep going -- far from it, he’s tired of running after little brats without any common sense -- but it’s kind of like final exams: once they’re over, all that shit you’d been ignoring suddenly comes back to bite you in the ass. Levi takes an afternoon off from cleaning to hoof it to campus with Petra to register for courses, apply for grants, check on scholarships, pay his tuition. He’s moving into the place that she shares with a few other nursing students.

On a warm afternoon the lot of them pack into the living room, debrief the summer, what went right, what could have been better. The discussion lingers until Erwin declares it finished, and that people need to get off the couches so they can pack them into a U-Haul and vacuum the crud out from underneath them. Mattresses get stripped and rolled down the stairs as staff make plans to drive one another back to their home towns, and Levi washes the smell of coffee out of the office walls while Erwin packs files in milk crates, filling the room with empty talk about curriculum documents and lesson planning.

It’s almost September when the job is done, the last U-Haul delivering furniture into winter storage, the last few canoes dropped off at a barnyard just out of town. Dusk is on the horizon as they pile into the bus and Erwin veers onto the highway.

The end-of-summer staff social -- it’s called Outlook, Hanji says, and the pun is not lost on Levi -- takes place over a weekend at a cottage Erwin had inherited from his father, a sprawling but cozy place with a beach and an outdoor hot tub. They stop at a grocery store and for alcohol and food on the way up, make fifty million coffee stops and pee breaks, blast Jimmy Eats World from the speakers, and pull up to the cottage around 11 PM. Somehow in the confusion of people moving around and moving in, dinner is made -- a whole roast ham, bacon, potatoes, bok choy, Nanaba’s TVP-ketchup special. Wine is poured. Someone makes a toast. Erwin’s mouth moves around words and there is not anywhere near enough room around the table for everyone. Nanaba is sitting in Mike’s lap, feeding him curry. Hanji slides a snowman made of mashed potatoes onto Levi’s plate.

After dinner and dishes Levi sweeps up around the cottage, scouts rooms for a clean-looking bed to the beat of people opening beers in the living room. Erwin comes up behind, hands him a warm can of PBR as he dusts off the top bed of a bunk bed with sheets decorated with fire trucks.

“That was mine,” Erwin says. “I slept on the bottom bed until I got over my fear of heights.” He’s pulling at the collar of Levi’s shirt, seeking skin.

“This is fucked up,” Levi says. Fucking someone on their childhood bed is almost as bad as meeting their parents.

They do it anyways, on the bottom bunk, because Levi doesn’t want to think about falling. Erwin’s grown fond of having Levi ride him, laughs about solo canoeing and gunnel-bobbing as Levi fucks himself onto him, until Levi rolls his hips and then it’s all bump and grind, hot tongues and cool air.

Later, in the moody purple dark of the hours before dawn, Levi finds himself wondering, when did it happen? Was it on Radiant Lake? Was it on the porch of the farmhouse? Was it long before that, when Erwin became the first person he could trust with his life? The words are in Levi’s mouth, stuck in there, and Levi wants to reach in and pull them out and put them in the air but he can’t, he can’t, they have two days left together.

Erwin stirs, his expression and his cock soft and warm, and Levi laughs to himself at how stupid it all is.

 

\----------------------

Erwin gets to it first.

“I adore you,” he says, over a breakfast of oatmeal fished out of a cardboard box.

“Shit,” Levi says.

 

\----------------------

They go swimming and canoeing, kayaking, tanning, fishing. There’s a barbecue and a fire pit and enough meat to make up for a whole summer of TVP. Mike’s cooking ribs while wearing nothing but an apron, sunning his ass cheeks with an ease that comes from a whole summer without rules. Moblit builds sandcastles and Hanji kicks them down. The hot tub is most certainly over capacity, spilling water onto the flagstones as its patrons dip into a bucket of sangria. Erwin sips wine, finishes _Fifty Shades Freed_ , disagrees with the ending. Levi’s wearing Erwin’s shorts.

“If I came back next summer,” Levi says, and Erwin raises one eyebrow. “If I came back next summer, it would be to make sure you don’t kill yourself.”

“You look nice.” Erwin’s shorts are enormous on him, but there’s a comfort to wearing the clothes of someone dear. “If you came back next summer, I’d think of more things to do, and stay up later.”

“I’d drag your corpse to bed.”

“I wouldn’t mind that.”

“Fucking --” But Erwin’s laughing, placing the book on the ground, and they’re kissing. Someone wolf-whistles. Someone does a loon call. Levi decides not to give a fuck, wants a world like this twelve months a year, a bunch of people in a house making dinner for one another, kissing in public, worrying about one another, burning down the world to make room for a better future.

Erwin breaks the kiss, throws him onto his shoulders like a canoe yoke. Hanji yells after them to use protection.

 

\----------------------

Erwin’s strong when he wants to be and gentle when he needs to be. Levi admires that about him, the way he can stumble on his words and still know what to do with his hands, that they can fuck for hours and eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches afterwards, as though they were regular people.

“--In love,” Levi breathes, without meaning to, when Erwin has him pinned against their bedroom doorframe and is tugging at his shorts. His hands flee to his mouth but it’s too late, the words are out there and there is no going back.

Erwin’s smile could save the world. “Come again?”

“I can’t --” Erwin leaves the shorts, lets his hands drift up Levi’s torso. “I --” Erwin’s hands are on the back of his neck, pulling their faces close, and his breath smells like wine. Suddenly, Levi remembers high cliffs and deep water, the sound of Erwin’s voice singing paddling songs and it’s bullshit, being in love with someone you’re always about to lose.

“You don’t have to say it,” Erwin whispers. “I’ll wait until next summer, if I have to. Or the summer after that. Or the summer after that.”

Levi gets his fuck, after all. Erwin settles face-up on the lower bunk, lets Levi take his time with his fingers and holy shit is he gorgeous beneath him, chest heaving, hands desperately grabbing at the sheets, cock hard and bobbing against his abdomen. Levi rolls on a condom and as he fucks into Erwin he lays his left hand -- the wrist with the trip ropes, all five of them -- over Erwin’s, his right hand on Erwin’s cock. Erwin’s right hand joins his. Levi thrusts once, twice, over and over, gasping, choking on spit, Erwin grunting in time.

They shower together, afterwards, because Levi hates being sticky, and Erwin loves showering with Levi. It’s in there, under the curtain of hot water, that Levi thinks about skin and skin and sex and death and loving and being loved.

But it’s not just Erwin -- it’s the lot of them, the entire crew of Camp Lookout staff, gathered around the firepit that night roasting marshmallows and shooting the shit about the summer, sharing stories about good times and bad days. Not many can afford to donate another summer, and some of them Levi may never see again. Someone breaks out a guitar. Hanji starts up a round of _Barges_ , then _Land of the Silver Birch_.

Levi is tucked into an extra-large sleeping bag with Erwin, tucked under Erwin’s arm, wearing Erwin’s toque, staring into the fire. The sky is full of stars. It’s cold in the way that fall tends to be, that bright, clear sort of cold that wakes up nerve endings and makes one wonder how anything can survive the winter.

They all stay up atrociously late, trying to put off the morning with firewood and coffee, but like a hard portage or a long paddle in the rain, all things inevitably end.

 

\----------------------

Somehow it ends the same way it started, with Erwin and Levi standing on the porch of an empty house, Erwin toting a clipboard, Levi with all his stuff in boxes. In return for storing it and taking care of it over the winter, the Board of Directors lets Erwin and Hanji use the bus to drive up north. Hanji’s loading it up with a few last-minute items -- Levi’s things that they’re driving down to Petra’s are already loaded in her van -- circle-checking, giving the two some space.

“I have to say, the Lookout house has never been quite as clean as it was this summer,” Erwin says.

“You have wifi in that shithole you spend the winter in?”

Erwin turns to look at him. There’s life dancing across his features. “No, but we have DSL and a few computers hooked up to it. Staff only.”

“You have Skype?”

“The Board of Directors would have my head if I didn’t.”

“If I -- wanted to check up on you every now and then, make sure you were keeping your shit together…”

Erwin takes Levi’s hand. “I’d like that.”

Hanji waves the two of them over. “I’ll take the bus,” she says, “If you’ll take my van.” Her eyes slide over to Levi. “You know, Erwin doesn’t need to be up on campus for another two weeks.”

As the bus is pulling away, Levi turns to Erwin, who clears his throat. “When do your classes start?”

“Frosh week starts next week. ...I’m not a part of that.”

There’s a pause.

“Algonquin Park accepts same-day bookings. If we leave now, we could be on a campsite by six.”

“We have no gear. Or food.”

“We’ll rent gear. Stop at a grocery store. Five days sound good? Hogan Lake and back?”

 

\----------------------

Everything’s different when it’s just the two of them, one canoe, two packs. Without campers to look after or other people to care about there’s a whole lot more silence, and in that silence Levi comes to realize how well he and Erwin fit together, Levi at the bow, Erwin at the stern. They ford hell and high water, a day of icy rain, the rough terrain of the portages with the silence of two people who know each other very, very well. They move fast enough to earn a rest day on Hogan, and spend it by the firepit, cooking elaborate dishes and talking, and listening, and kissing.

On their last full day Erwin points out where the map has marked a trail that leads to a stand of virgin white pines, and they park the canoe and make a two-hour trek into the woods to see them.

“Europeans, figuring they had the right to do whatever they pleased with the land they had stolen, cut down nearly every tree in the province over the course of the nineteenth century,” Erwin says, as they hike. “In the last decade of the 1800s the country, still newly formed, established this place as a provincial park to save what few trees remained from the old growth -- but in the process of doing so, also forced the people who lived here off their own land.” He twists his mouth. “Respect is an obligation. We’re here because of a great deal of human suffering.”

Levi’s not sure what to make of it, that part of Erwin that is always hungering for a better world, but when they arrive at the grove of pines he thinks he understands a little better. It’s immediately obvious which trees are part of the old growth. They’re enormous, silent even in the wind, much bigger than the pines that cover the rest of the park, and something about them betrays their immense age -- the things they’d witnessed over hundreds and hundreds of years. Levi and Erwin stand there for a while, listening to the sounds of chikadees and squirrels chirping.

“Big-ass trees,” Levi murmurs, eventually. Erwin chuckles. Given a bit of good luck, the pines would be there long after they both were gone.

They fuck in the tent that night for what feels like hours, taking it slow, mindful of how many condoms they brought. Erwin goes down on Levi, deepthroats, and his mouth is wonderful. Levi thinks back to that first awkward blow job in the office and how much better Erwin’s gotten since then. He tells Erwin. Erwin tries to say something, but the way his throat rumbles around Levi’s cock tips Levi’s orgasm right off.

In the middle of the night they lie together in the tent, and Erwin holds Levi tight. “This doesn’t have to be the end,” he says.

“I know.”

“You’ll come back?”

“I will.” Levi feels his lips curl into a smile. It was all already written in that song, _Land of the Silver Birch_ : blue lakes and rocky shores -- Erwin’s blue eyes, Levi’s grey. And the choice, the promise, that directly follows. “I will return once more.”

 

\----------------------

Some people say that the most important freedom is the freedom to leave. That’s why we cut doors in our walls, even though the world outside them might be dangerous -- so that we always have somewhere to go. It's not about a deal, or a test, or a chance to fall in love, or fate. You leave your home behind and you might get devoured whole, but at least you had been free.

September comes around again with the crisp smell of leaves and clean air. Levi puts his camping gear in boxes and stores them next to Petra’s, finds himself back in lectures and labs, goes on day hikes with the few Lookout alumni still in town. Talk starts up about a reunion winter trip, and although Levi knows nothing about quinzhees and portable wood stoves, he figures he’s a fast learner. Life goes on more or less the same as it was before.

On a Sunday morning he calls up Erwin on Skype, and the moment Erwin appears on screen sitting in what appears to be a log cabin, wearing a flannel shirt and a knitted toque, is the moment Levi realizes that Erwin is very far away, and that without meaning to he’d committed to this, for the long haul.

“Fuck,” Levi says, and Erwin laughs, because Erwin knows what’s up, asks Levi how his first classes have gone, describes how the schoolyear is going for him and Hanji. The town near the school is slowly expanding, and there’s an engineering contracting firm looking for a new junior consultant within the next few years.

“Not that I’d ever want to tie you down without your consent, of course,” Erwin says, “But there are some backpacking trails here that are really beautiful. I’d like to show you them, some day.”

There are still three years of school to survive. But until then -- “About that co-director thing.”

 

\----------------------

_Land of the silver birch_  
 _Home of the beaver_  
 _Where still the mighty moose_  
 _Wanders at will_

_Blue lakes and rocky shore_  
 _I will return once more_  
 _Boom diddy-ah da, boom diddy-ah da,_  
 _boom diddy-ah da, boo-oo-oom_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed this silly little AU as much as I enjoyed writing it <3 I have some thoughts about a sequel, but I think I might focus on packing out the last trips I'm guiding this summer, haha.
> 
> As always, you can find me on [tumblr](http://kanthia.tumblr.com/) \-- questions, comments and kudos are always appreciated!
> 
>  
> 
> [Listen to Michael Mitchell sing the title drop](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUgHzMPflek)


	7. Epilogue: A Most Poorly-Kept Secret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This will all come around again.

Lookout runs a fall and winter program, one-night weekend hiking trips in a small park a forty-minute drive from the city. Somehow Levi gets roped into guiding one of them when a staff drops out at the last minute due to strep throat, and wouldn’t you know, bright and early on a Saturday morning in early October there’s Jaeger, a spark in his eye and raring to get going. He’d signed up after finding out that Levi was on the trip.

Levi doesn’t mind. He’s fond of the kid, and had been thinking about him and his sister. It’s nice to know that he’s still alive and kicking the shit out of the crap hand life has dealt him. He and one of the other campers, a hot-headed little brat named Kirstein, get into a huge fight when Kirstein mentions that he's using the trip to fraud a few volunteer hours, that requires them to be physically separated at one point.

And it’s not bad, the little campsite a two-hour walk away from civilization. It’s obviously under heavier use than the backcountry canoe trip sites -- the dirt under the tent spaces are packed down hard, and the ground is almost completely clear of firewood -- but they make it work. They play cards, the six of them, four campers and a stern co-staff named Rico who is surprisingly good at Euchre. Make a fire and eat pasta, make s’mores, watch the sun set two hours earlier than it did in the summer. That night it’s windy as hell until one in the morning, when it starts pouring rain, and Levi has nightmares all night long.

He Skypes with Erwin after getting back to the city. Somehow, in between lesson planning, Erwin has had the time to write a transition manual for the summer director position, which he e-mails to Levi. “You can still say no,” he says, smiling in that way that makes the corners of his eyes crinkle. “I wouldn’t be offended. I realize that there are a lot of other, more profitable ways to spend a summer.”

Levi snorts. He was doomed from the moment he and Erwin had met.

\----------------------

January comes around and it’s time to start sending out staff application packages, advertising the position to do-gooders looking for a very strange summer. Erwin fires off e-mails and Levi hikes around campus, putting up recruitment posters. Applications trickle, then storm, in. They narrow it down and set up eighty interviews.

(Levi had no idea how popular Lookout staff positions were. It almost makes him uncomfortable, that Erwin offered him a position so eagerly. But he is the best man for the job, and he takes a certain amount of pride in that. And Erwin is never wrong about people.)

In the first week of February they’re interviewing candidates from the university, and Erwin drives into town. He arrives late on a Friday night with a knock on Levi’s flat door. Petra answers, and squeaks in surprise; Levi emerges from his room to see her gathered up in Erwin’s arms.

Erwin is wearing a wool sweater and worn jeans and mukluks -- a pair of fucking handmade mukluks -- and Levi catches a lump in his throat, because it’s the middle of the winter and he’s missed Erwin. Erwin grins. Petra excuses herself, and Erwin takes Levi out for burgers despite the fact that it’s almost midnight.

They fuck that night on Levi’s bed, slowly, softly, cognisant of the other people in the house, aware that it’s been months without each other. Levi straddles Erwin, lets him stretch him out again, lets his hands relearn the planes of Erwin's body. Levi loves every inch of him, from his blond hair that’s gotten a bit too long, to the little roll of flab he’s earned over the winter.

“You’re thinner than I remember,” Erwin says, as if in response.

“Do you want me to suck your dick or not?”

Erwin laughs, and Levi laughs, and it’s laughter that keeps them in love. It’s snowing outside, obliterating the whole world.

\----------------------

Nile’s been moving up in the world, because when his face pops up in the Skype conversation, Erwin recognizes the view from his office window -- Parliament Hill.

“They moved our division to Ottawa seven weeks ago,” Nile says, rubbing the back of his neck. He works in risk management consulting for high-end adventure programs. Lookout’s not important enough to draw the gaze, or the potential lawsuits, of the kinds of clients that his firm takes on. (Thankfully.) Erwin detects a hint of the apologetic in Nile’s tone, and that’s how their relationship has been ever since Erwin’s second summer at Lookout. Nile thinks Erwin has no ambition. Erwin thinks Nile has no ambition. Life goes on.

They chat about the few things they have in common -- policy changes, insurance prices, climate change. The conversation shifts to home life. Nile’s eldest daughter will be starting school in September. Marie is pregnant again. It’s April and there are taxes to do, a bigger home to consider, maybe another car, or a minivan.

Nile pauses, then half-smiles. “You’re laughing at me, aren’t you.”

“I’m most certainly not.”

“I know that look, Erwin. You’re thinking, _how do these city people do it, throw their lives away for a little stability_.”

“I have stability.”

“You know what I mean.” There’s silence, as Nile signs a document and pulls out the one underneath it. Then, lightly, “How’s Levi?”

“Levi?” Erwin raises an eyebrow. “Fitting in quite well. It’s been a few summers working together, now.”

“Working together? Or --”

Erwin’s smile tells all.

“-- If I recall, Lookout has an interview question about what to do if co-staff are romancing while responsible for campers.”

“We’re co-directors.”

“Are you?”

“--Among other things.”

“Erwin. We can have you investigated for violating your own policy, you know.”

Erwin laughs, and Nile can’t help but join in. Maybe not as different as they liked to pretend: two men who have something they care about enough to disregard the fuzzier details. “Listen, I have to go. We’re interviewing staff applicants this afternoon.”

“Take care of yourself.”

“You as well.”

\----------------------

“Jaeger.”

“Had him as a camper. Intense. We could use that, though.” On his staff application, under the question _why do you want to work at Camp Lookout_ , Eren had scrawled in Sharpie, **CANOE TRIPPING**. He’d punctuated much of his interview by slamming the table with his fist.

“Ackerman.”

“Had her as a camper, too. Excellent. Overqualified.” On the bottom of her staff application, Mikasa had neatly pencilled _I will not accept a staff position unless one is offered to Eren._

“Arlert?”

“Smart. Small. I’m still not impressed.” He’d suggested several ways to save on the camp’s food budget just based on what he could infer from the website.

“Grit overcomes strength nine times out of ten.”

“Grit won’t help him when the canoe outweighs him.”

“If I recall, you couldn’t centre-flip a canoe your first summer.”

“...Fine.”

“Braun.”

“Obviously. The kind of guy who can carry two canoes and still help you get over the death of your goldfish.”

“Hoover?”

“Lacks initiative, but seems supportive.” Braun and Hoover had asked to be interviewed together. Hoover had sweat buckets throughout it, but his application suggested that there was more to him than nerves.

“Leonhart.”

“I’m not convinced she really wants this.”

“We can offer her a position, and see what she says.”

“Fair enough.”

“Lenz?”

There’s a short silence.

“There’s more to what we do than just carrying heavy things, Levi. Her interview was flawless.”

“If we hire Lenz, I want Ymir as well.” The woman had botched her interview -- didn’t strike either of them as the kind of person who particularly cared about others. Lookout had a history of taking on drifters and people on the fringes, but people who refused to share family names had a tendency of bringing the authorities looking. Something about her, though, had resonated well with Levi.

“I think that can be arranged. Kirstein?”

“Asshole. Resume padder. I want him.”

“Bodt.”

“Pleasant. He'll work well with anyone.”

“Springer?”

Levi grimaces. “He's dedicated. The campers will like him.”

“Blouse, too. That makes twelve. Eight returning staff makes twenty.”

“Twenty-two, with us.”

“Well, that’s enough staff to run a summer. Let’s make it happen.”

“Roger, Erwin.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> when you feel embarrassed then I'll be your pride  
> when you need directions then I'll be the guide  
> for all time  
> for all time


End file.
